Pemalite said:
Soundwave said:
You can say that for any console, PS5 could have used a better GPU and had a better CPU
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Correct. Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X are both mid-range, Xbox Series S is low-end... For fixed hardware.
Switch 2 is low-end if compared to fixed hardware, but mid-range when an apples to apple comparison is made to mobile hardware.
And that is perfectly fine.
I do take issue when people make blatant false claims/lies that it's high-end or premium hardware. It's not.
It's competent hardware.
Soundwave said:
mainstream consoles have to be sold at a reasonable price point and generally even at a profit these days because stock investors have more sway over CEOs today (it you don't hit revenue/profit targets for a quarter or two, you're fucked).
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Also correct. Price is more important than power when trying to sell in volume to mass consumers, I fall in the top 5% of income earners on Earth, but that's not the majority... You have high and low-socio economic regions across the planet that these devices need to sell into.
Soundwave said:
Switch 2 is performing on par with some $600+ portable PC devices and very clearly just from looking at the device and holding it, it's not some cheap toy.
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In regards to the CPU, portable PC's dominate the Switch 2.
Most portable PC's also have more RAM, they all start at 16GB with many trending towards 24GB-32GB.
It's the GPU where things even out, mostly that is because AMD's mobile graphics is technologically behind, they are still running RDNA2 and RDNA3 solutions rather than the more competent and flexible RDNA4 platform with better upscaling.
But even when AMD handhelds are running RDNA2, they are still returning results that are often ahead of the Switch 2, especially in rasterization.
By comparison, the Switch 2 is cheaper, it is an electronics toy... And that's not a bad thing as like you alluded prior, price is an important facet.
Soundwave said:
It's a heavy, premium feeling product with a giant ass screen. They skimped a bit on the power draw the main display can have to save on battery life, but otherwise in terms of performance you're not getting much of anything on the market for $450 as good as that.
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No. The display is just garbage... There isn't any excuse you can formulate on Earth that makes it an acceptable panel.
And implementing overdrive, whilst it would have resolved some of the ghosting issues especially in G2G response times, it's still a garbage display.
I still prefer to pick up my Switch 1 OLED to play in handheld, even for new releases like Metroid Prime 4 over my Switch 2 console, it just looks and performs better because of that display... Colours are vivid, contrasts are top notch, something that the Switch 2 LCD display will never have even if Nintendo implemented Overdrive to fix the ghosting issues.
And whilst the display size increased over the Switch 1 (7.9" vs 6.2"), it's still smaller than PC handhelds like the Legion Go (8.8"), OneXPlayer Mini (8.8"), Ayaneo Kun (8.4"), MSI Claw 8 (8")
So if a large display is an important facet, then there are better options available than the Switch 1 or Switch 2 consoles.
And obviously, PC handhelds have the option of OLED.
Soundwave said:
They skimped a bit on the power draw the main display can have to save on battery life, but otherwise in terms of performance you're not getting much of anything on the market for $450 as good as that.
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The "It sits at this price, nothing can match it for the hardware" is actually a shit argument.
The Switch 2 can't match the Switch 1 OLED price point and offer a better display... We can keep shifting that goal post every day.
Fact of the matter is, you get what you pay for.
PC handhelds offer more, so they cost more... Just like the Switch 2 offers more than the Switch 1 in many areas, thus the Switch 2 costs more.
But neither the Switch 2 or PC handhelds can match the Switch 1 in terms of price/features/performance.
However during Black Friday the Lenovo Legion Go S dropped to $450 AUD, Switch 2 starts at $699 AUD.
The Lenovo Legion Go S also have more than a quarter of a century worth of games it can draw from.
Again, you get what you pay for... But let's not pretend the Switch 2 is the best and cheapest handheld on the market, it simply isn't.
Soundwave said:
It outperforms the Steam Deck significantly, it can run PS5 games even heavy ones like Star Wars Outlaws respectably even in its launch window, that's an impressive level of performance for a mobile device. Never in the 3D era has a portable device from any of Sony/Nintendo/MS been able to run more or less current gen games without too much fuss. The PSP definitely wasn't pumping out PS2 level visuals, nor was the Vita able to run PS3 games, and the Switch could kinda/sorta run PS4 tier games but often at significant compromise. The Switch 2 is better at running the present day modern games than things like the PSP and Vita which were impressive for their time.
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Considering the Steamdeck released 3 years before the Switch 2. I would hope the Switch 2 is faster.
The Steamdeck can also play PC ported, PS5 games, making this a non-argument really.
How the Vita or PSP performs is irrelevant, the difference between today and 22 years ago when the PSP released is that... Mobile hardware outsold fixed hardware like consoles and PC, thus the corresponding R&D investment in mobile technology increased by orders of magnitude...
And because of all of that, mobile hardware tends to be on the leading edge fabrication nodes from TSMC and Samsung whilst AMD, Intel and nVidia tend to run on older and cheaper nodes.
There is absolutely no freaking way that comparing the market from 20+ years ago and using that as an argument for competent technology today makes any sense at all. Things have changed. The market has changed.
Soundwave said:
Nvidia also dwarfs every other chipset manufacturer, lol, so it's not like any of them have anything to teach Nvidia. Nvidia has one of the largest market caps in the world, they could buy all of Sony and shit them out for breakfast if they wanted to. There's nothing a Samsung is going to teach them, they have the best engineers on the planet.
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Market cap doesn't determine the size of a company. It's not representative of the price of assets, it's not representative of revenues, it's not representative of profit margins, it's not representative of size of the workforce even.
...It's the same trap people fall into when discussing Teraflops or Bits, there is more nuance to these things than a single denominator can showcase.
Market cap is based on the number of shares a company has at a certain price which shareholders can buy into... Thus a company that is getting all the media attention, normally tends to sit into peoples mind-share and attention, which has a flow-on effect to share price.
There is also the "future prospects" that play a role into this as well.
nVidia is currently ranked 50th in terms of revenue (Far below the likes of Apple, Microsoft or Alphabet) and is currently ranked 15th in terms of profit (Again, behind Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple).
nVidia whilst they have done well, aren't the biggest company in the world, they are the company with the largest market capitalization based on the number of shares they have issued at the current price.
Does nVidia even make the most chipsets? Also no.
Intel sold 100~ million chips in 2025. That doesn't include motherboard chipsets, audio chips, networking chips etc'.
Total GPU shipments from nVidia, Intel and AMD was at 75~ million.
Intel sells more chips, but make less profit from each chip sold, plus they run their own fabs which is another additional cost burden, hence why they are struggling financially.
Things are more nuanced than people realize.
Soundwave said:
And even as is, I think if Nintendo knew all the tarrif/RAM price increases that were coming in the future, this may not have been the chip design they chose, they may have opted for something cheaper, because I bet right now they're probably not too happy with things like RAM prices. But too late to cut anything now, we got a very nice piece of kit.
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Actually, Nintendo is in an enviable position.
Only having 12GB of LPDDRX memory and a paltry 256GB of NAND is playing in their pricing favor whilst we undergo the DRAM and NAND price crunch.
I still would have liked to have seen the Switch 2 come with 16GB of LPDDR5X Ram to let the console breathe for the next 7 years, especially as Ray Tracing, DLSS and Frame-generation are all fighting over a tiny pool of memory... And Nintendo opting to include a large percentage of memory for the OS/Background tasks so it wasn't as clunky and terrible as the Switch 1.
With the Switch 2 the biggest criticism I have is that terrible display and the short battery life and the garbage anti-consumer E-waste Game Key Cards.
The 12GB of Ram instead of 16GB is a small gripe... And mandating SD Express was a very very smart decision.
And I am actually okay with them using a Tegra Orin chip with significantly reduced CPU clocks... Having it on Samsungs 8nm process is definitely a smart cost-cutting decision whilst remaining competent.
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