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sc94597 on 05 May 2025
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Yeah, when I use the Jetson Power Estimator tool with a 14 SM Orin chip, 8 CPU cores clocked @1113 Mhz max (according to leak Switch 2's CPU is about 1.1 Ghz), DLA's turned off entirely, all non-SOC board features turned off. CPU and GPU load set to "low" and GPU max clock at 816Mhz (to accomodate for the fact that Switch 2 only has 12 SM, 14SM @816mhz ~ 95% the performance of 12SM @1007.3Mhz.) 

When you do that, the estimated power draw is 18W, which is about 20-30% higher than Switch 1. 

So these are the explanations: 

1. The Switch 2 is running at a somewhat higher TDP docked than the Switch 1 (18W-22W vs. 11-15W.) Nintendo had some room in terms of thermals in Switch 1, evidenced by home-brew Switch overclocking, so that could be possible. 

2. There are some efficiency gains with T239 vs. T234, which could be as simple as the A78C cores being more power efficient at lower clocks than the AE cores, or could be Samsung 5nm. 

3. Some combinations of 1 and 2. 

or 

4. The leaked clock-rates are wrong. 

If we consider handheld mode is suppose to max at 560Mhz according to the leak, a comparable setup (performance-wise) would be 480Mhz @14SM, which the Orin power tool implies would pull about 13W-15W. That seems way too high. The Switch 2's battery has 16Wh capacity, that would imply a battery life of about 1.2 hours if fully utilized.

We know the Switch 2 has a low-end battery life of about 2 hours, so handheld mode should be about 8W overall, and more like 5-6W if you consider the screen, controllers, storage, etc are using power. 

Heck even if you choose the Orin NX (which only has 8SM) and clock the GPU cores to 408Mhz one gets 8W of power consumption for about 50% of the theoretical performance of Switch 2 handheld mode (12SM @ 560Mhz.) 

Now of course Nvidia might be giving a very liberal upper-range power consumption estimate to be safe, but still the difference at the very low frequencies seems quite large. Too large for there not to be some missing efficiency advantage for T239 vs. T234. 

A lot of assumptions and speculation here, which goes to show we don't know much about the specifics, even though it is clear the ballpark of where Switch 2 lands. 

Last edited by sc94597 - on 05 May 2025