How Will be Switch 2 Performance Wise?

[bonzobanana]

sc94597 said:

HoloDust said:

Which is to be expected - the best feature of consoles (and old home computers), at least form my POV, was fixed hardware, so games can be fine tuned for that specific platform.

Take Outlaws - it's running with a lot of cut down geometry on Switch 2 and there's no such preset for PCs. Unfortunately, as much as PC handhelds are nice, I don't think any developer will go extra mile (at least for foreseeable future) to make fine tuned ports just for them, instead of just treating them as low power PCs. Maybe that will change with XBOX ROG Ally, but I kinda doubt it.

bonzobanana said:

I think you will always get fixed platform optimisations for consoles like Switch 2 where they approach a problem by scaling down the game engine to work well on weaker hardware. There are so many variations of PC hardware that will never happen. You do get many low spec gamer or potato gamer patches for pc games. I remember playing Fallout 4 on my Celeron laptop with only 4GB. I used the low texture patches, a low display resolution and potato options and got it running more for a laugh than anything and managed to get about 22 fps at best with 12 fps being the average. I remember playing many ports on Xbox 360 and PS3 but the full experience of those games was on PC. Maybe I've got the wrong impression but it does seem the Steamdeck is delivering a game experience as good if not better than Switch 2 for multi-platform games. Maybe I have watched too many youtube videos with a pro steamdeck bias. 

Addressing you both since the responses were similar. While it is true that Switch 2 has the benefit of closed platform optimizations, I am not convinced we can chalk it entirely up to this. The game runs very poor on Steam Deck even after you apply "low spec gamer" optimizations and essentially only runs well when you turn off RTGI. We have also seen Steam Deck specific optimizations in games like Elden Ring, so it isn't entirely unlikely that a developer could target Steam Deck.

I think much of the performance difference is because Ampere is just a better architecture when it comes to ray-tracing flop-to-flop than RDNA2. With similar raw performance levels between SW2 Handheld and Steam Deck, you're going to see SW2 outperform it in RT-centric titles. Furthermore, the RTGI implementation in Outlaws doesn't even fully utilize hardware acceleration as much as it could, and I would expect the difference to increase as the generation progresses. 

If the difference is due largely to a lower render  load on SW2, we'd expect resolution changes to scale better than it does in reality on Steam Deck. 

To be honest I agree with your point, I think Nvidia DLSS upscaling and some of the other features of the chipset are helping the Switch 2 punch above its weight but I feel there will be games that really need more CPU resources that will show Switch 2 to be very weak. I've seen people state the Switch 2 will be capable of pretty versions of older games rather than run the latest game engines well. I think we need a few more Switch 2 multi-platform conversions to get the full picture though. I totally accept Cyberpunk and Outlaws are delivering an experience which hasn't been scaled down that much and quite competitive with other platforms.

Looking at the Outlaws quality reductions for Switch 2, it looks to be general tweaks for weaker hardware but a couple of improvements over Xbox Series S. I'm not sure how the steamdeck compares with Outlaws.

– Ray tracing effects remain in tact
– Differences in lighting on Switch 2
– Switch 2 tends to be a bit coarser and sometimes overly dark or missing some lighting
– There are also cases where the lighting looks similar to Xbox Series S or even a few where Switch 2 is better
– Resolution of ray tracing likely takes a hit on Switch 2 with blurrier results on near smooth surfaces
– Shadows tend to be blurrier and blockier on Switch 2
– Distant shadows appear to be ray-traced like other consoles
– Volumetric fog cut back on Switch 2, but volumetric clouds are good
– Other various tweaks and cuts to assets
– Only 20GB, which is a third of other console versions
– Foliage and grass density scaled back on Switch 2
– The game uses DLSS with DRS
– Star Wars Outlaws has a typical resolution of 720p on Switch 2 with an output resolution of 1440p when docked
– 540p in handheld mode, but 1080p output with DLSS
– 30 frames per second target for Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2
– Performance is pretty stable, no frame pacing problems
– Some menus run at 60 FPS
– Some cutscenes have slight drops
– Draw distance scaled back in handheld mode