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Forums - Nintendo - How Will be Switch 2 Performance Wise?

 

Switch 2 is out! How you classify?

Terribly outdated! 3 5.26%
 
Outdated 1 1.75%
 
Slightly outdated 14 24.56%
 
On point 31 54.39%
 
High tech! 7 12.28%
 
A mixed bag 1 1.75%
 
Total:57
Soundwave said:

More PS5 to Switch 2 comparisons, this time Yakuza

I actually think I like the look of the Switch 2 version better. Looks just a tad more crisp. 

I know this isn't the most demanding game in the world..... but this looks near 1 to 1 with the PS5.
This is more impressive showcase of the Switch2, than the cyberpunk one.

edit:

Conina said:
Soundwave said:

More PS5 to Switch 2 comparisons, this time Yakuza

I actually think I like the look of the Switch 2 version better. Looks just a tad more crisp. 

No wonder. It ain't a native PS5 version... neither a PS4 Pro version. Just the basic PS4 version with its limitations.

Ah.... that explains it abit.
Devs didn't bother with the PS5.



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JRPGfan said:
Soundwave said:

More PS5 to Switch 2 comparisons, this time Yakuza

I actually think I like the look of the Switch 2 version better. Looks just a tad more crisp. 

I know this isn't the most demanding game in the world..... but this looks near 1 to 1 with the PS5.
This is more impressive showcase of the Switch2, than the cyberpunk one.

edit:

Conina said:

No wonder. It ain't a native PS5 version... neither a PS4 Pro version. Just the basic PS4 version with its limitations.

Ah.... that explains it abit.
Devs didn't bother with the PS5.

Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, even something as big as RDR2 doesn't have PS5 version, with next gen update announced only few days ago, so lot of that going around.



h2ohno said:

From what I understand based on the specs that have come out, the Switch 2 is overperforming relative to its actual specs, and this comes down most of all to DLSS being a true game-changer, but also to games not truly pushing current-gen consoles like they should and third-parties doing a much better job at optimising games for Switch 2 than they've done for the last 3 generations.

I don't think its overperforming at this stage because its new hardware although accept its been in development a long time. I think we can state its CPU performance is a massive upgrade on the original Switch and even PS4 so it has the CPU performance to run much more sophisticated game engines plus there is a lot more memory. In GPU terms I think its relying heavily on upscaling and I don't think it's performance is that high. I remember so many times with Nintendo hardware that before launch people were hoping and even expecting high performance but reality hit home after launch. I remember the wii u and at the beginning it was claimed to be 700 Gflops or more and then we got a technical breakdown of the hardware and it could either be 352 Gflops or 176 Gflops and in the end it was confirmed as 176 Gflops below that of both Xbox 360 and PS3. In fact many games on those systems ran better than wii u, higher resolutions, higher frame rates, much better sound etc despite the wii u launching much later. At this point I don't see how the portable performance figures given can be true based on the fabrication process and small capacity battery so I'm expecting a reset on those figures at some point. I'm expecting them to be well under 1 Teraflop in real terms.

The recent DF video on Hogwarts shows the Switch 2 is mainly using PS4 quality assets and in actual size the game is half that of the PS4 version. Of course optimising size is not something the PS4 has to do in many ways as its an optical drive but still the installed size is twice as big. I remember the wii u having far inferior sound to PS3 which often had amazing soundtracks in 7.1 surround. In that DF video a few bits and pieces were better on PS4 than Switch 2 and the upscaling quality of Switch 2 was a bit poor in places however in other places the assets were more of Xbox series S quality. It felt like the Switch 2 was sitting in between PS4 and maybe PS4 Pro but of course if you eliminated the DLSS upscaling from the console it would be well below PS4 in portable terms.

Overall I think Switch 2 is a huge upgrade on Switch 1 and brings a new level of performance on proprietary portable gaming hardware. I don't think we would want it too powerful anyway and end up with only a battery runtime of 1 hour or less. It's been pegged in the middle with regards battery runtime and performance which is probably the best place to be commercially. Remember the fabrication process is not great, it's dated so its a bit power hungry anyway. 

I can see the later version of the Switch 2 addressing many issues with perhaps use of a better fabrication process and a OLED screen so battery runtime will improve massively and you will have a better quality screen to boot.

Lowering the performance and going for cheaper components means Nintendo have wiggle room if the Switch 2 doesn't perform as well commercially as they hoped, it means they could lower pricing in many markets in order to increase demand and get the platform to more people. I think there is a chunk of people that bought the original Switch at the pricing there that won't be buying the Switch 2. Parents who have 2 or more children to buy a console for may opt out of Switch 2 because of pricing. 

I think the biggest competition for Switch 2 is the original Switch and can see it outselling it for sometime due to price advantage. The Switch Lite is amazing value nowadays and much more portable with much better battery runtime. You could say its a far superior portable platform. I saw a video on youtube of a modded Switch Lite and it was amazing how much they could overclock it to run games to a much better standard too. Zelda BOTW etc at 60fps and running Gamecube games emulated like Zelda Windwaker. Even with the overclocking it still got much better battery runtime than Switch 2. They even had it running PS1, PS2, PSP and Vita games which I thought was super impressive. Also both Linux and Android operating systems were available. In it's overclocked state they even had it emulating itself which I thought was quite funny but pointless of course.

Personally I'm the sort of gamer that isn't obsessed with new games, most of which I don't find that good. I prefer playing the best games and those are on multiple platforms and across a long period of time. 

If it wasn't for the new Mario Kart game it would feel like a bit of a poor launch. I think that game will sell more Switch 2s than any other reason.



bonzobanana said:

 I remember the wii u and at the beginning it was claimed to be 700 Gflops or more and then we got a technical breakdown of the hardware and it could either be 352 Gflops or 176 Gflops and in the end it was confirmed as 176 Gflops below that of both Xbox 360 and PS3. In fact many games on those systems ran better than wii u, higher resolutions, higher frame rates, much better sound etc despite the wii u launching much later. At this point I don't see how the portable performance figures given can be true based on the fabrication process and small capacity battery so I'm expecting a reset on those figures at some point. I'm expecting them to be well under 1 Teraflop in real terms.

Yeah, there was a lot of guessing involved back in pre-WiiU days. I remember folks hoping for 4770/4850 level performance, which is ~1TFLOPS - which would be reasonable, and not that expensive, since it was fairly old at that point. Then there were some leaks that it was E6760, which put it around 576GFLOPS, bnut newer architecture than 4000 series. Then WiiU released, indeed based on 4000 series, but power-wise it was very disappointing (saying this as someone who still has it hooked to TV due to few coop games that are not available/possible on other systems).

I don't think situation with SW2 is similar - pretty much everything was leaked and then confirmed, both specifications and clocks.



Good Cyberpunk 2077 comparisons here between XBox Series S vs Switch 2 and another video is PS4 Pro vs. Switch 2.

Series S is in 30 FPS Quality Mode here too: 

Series S has a bit better crowd density I would say but Switch 2 may have some areas with better textures and image quality. It's pretty close, not too shabby for a handheld device. You're getting something pretty close to a Series S in hybrid form factor. 

Next up is PS4 Pro, I would say the Switch 2 version is simply better than PS4 Pro. There are some assets the PS4 Pro simply does not have and crowd/vehicle density is better on the Switch 2 (side by side begins at approx 16:00 in):

Differences are small but they are there. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 23 May 2025

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I mean the raw specs are pretty much what they are at this point. Nintendo isn't going to share an SDK with this documentation and then say "Oops actually the console you're developing games for is weaker than we told you it would be." And too many independent sources have confirmed the SDK's documented clocks.

561 Mhz with 1536 Ampere cores => 1.72 Tflops

1007.3 Mhz with 1536 Ampere cores => 3.09 Tflops

There are some references to a 1400Mhz max GPU, which probably won't be a real mode, but would => 4.3 Tflops.

Something like that probably would require a 25W-30W TDP mode. I don't think the Switch 2's cooling is incapable of it (Switch 1 was infamously undervolted against what its cooling supported when overclocked/overvolted, as an example.) But Nintendo is very conservative when it comes to power consumption, so probably not. I already think docked mode probably is approaching 18-20W TDP. 

Last edited by sc94597 - on 23 May 2025

sc94597 said:

I mean the raw specs are pretty much what they are at this point. Nintendo isn't going to share an SDK with this documentation and then say "Oops actually the console you're developing games for is weaker than we told you it would be." And too many independent sources have confirmed the SDK's documented clocks.

561 Mhz with 1536 Ampere cores => 1.72 Tflops

1007.3 Mhz with 1536 Ampere cores => 3.09 Tflops

There are some references to a 1400Mhz max GPU, which probably won't be a real mode, but would => 4.3 Tflops.

Something like that probably would require a 25W-30W TDP mode. I don't think the Switch 2's cooling is incapable of it (Switch 1 was infamously undervolted against what its cooling supported when overclocked/overvolted, as an example.) But Nintendo is very conservative when it comes to power consumption, so probably not. I already think docked mode probably is approaching 18-20W TDP. 

Even if those figures are actually correct they are only theoretical peak figures especially for portable mode. There is no way the Switch 2 can maintain 1.72 Teraflops with only 4-6W on a fabrication process that is mainly 10Nm. The Switch 1 in theory had something like 170-200 maximum Gflops depending on the source you read but in reality for games that pushed  the Switch it was around 90-140 Gflops according to modders/hackers and for games that didn't need such resources it was considerably less. There are thermal restraints which are a factor too. The reality of the Switch 2 will surely be well below 1 Teraflop for portable performance. This is something I'm sure that will become clear later. 20Wh battery only gives 10W per hour and the screen is brighter with a high refresh rate, its going to be using up to half that wattage. The Switch 2 only has 4-6W to use per hour absolute maximum but for most games will be considerably less in portable mode. They are claiming up to 6.5 hours runtime on Switch 2 which I guess is with the screen brightness very low and no wifi and that gives the system 3W per hour of which probably a minimum of 2W going to the screen maybe. What sort of gflops figure will that be? Lets not forget the Switch 2 is a lot more powerful in CPU resources so that has to be factored in they need more power. We don't even want 1.72 Teraflops surely as battery runtime would be terrible and it wouldn't be a great portable system. We want Switch 2 to have lower gflops performance surely for portable mode.



bonzobanana said:

Even if those figures are actually correct they are only theoretical peak figures especially for portable mode. There is no way the Switch 2 can maintain 1.72 Teraflops with only 4-6W on a fabrication process that is mainly 10Nm. The Switch 1 in theory had something like 170-200 maximum Gflops depending on the source you read but in reality for games that pushed  the Switch it was around 90-140 Gflops according to modders/hackers and for games that didn't need such resources it was considerably less. There are thermal restraints which are a factor too. The reality of the Switch 2 will surely be well below 1 Teraflop for portable performance. This is something I'm sure that will become clear later. 20Wh battery only gives 10W per hour and the screen is brighter with a high refresh rate, its going to be using up to half that wattage. The Switch 2 only has 4-6W to use per hour absolute maximum but for most games will be considerably less in portable mode. They are claiming up to 6.5 hours runtime on Switch 2 which I guess is with the screen brightness very low and no wifi and that gives the system 3W per hour of which probably a minimum of 2W going to the screen maybe. What sort of gflops figure will that be? Lets not forget the Switch 2 is a lot more powerful in CPU resources so that has to be factored in they need more power. We don't even want 1.72 Teraflops surely as battery runtime would be terrible and it wouldn't be a great portable system. We want Switch 2 to have lower gflops performance surely for portable mode.

1. The figures are actually correct. There is no "if" here. An SDK with documentation meant for developers to have an idea of how powerful the target system will be isn't going to have the wrong max clocks in it. 

2. TFLOPs always are "theoretical peak figures." In reality a gaming workload is a mixed-workload that isn't just floating point (or even just FP32) calculations, and there can be bottlenecks outside of the GPU cores. But if we were to run some sort of non-bottlenecked floating-point exclusive workload (like float-by-float matrix multiplication with FP32 precision) on the Switch 2's GPU it would achieve these figures (or somewhere close to it.) 

3. Yes, if the game doesn't require the highest clock rates, and the developer chooses to down-clock to save battery life, it won't be running at the maximum performance. That is trivially true though. And some games will utilize the full clock rate, running at the maximum performance. 

4. Your assertion "below 1 Teraflop for portable performance" is totally meaningless and has no basis in anything. Again, Teraflops aren't a measurement of gaming performance, they're a measurement of floating-point performance (and specifically FP32 in this case), which only amounts to about 2/3rds of the compute that a gaming workload involves. But again, if we were to put a non-bottlenecked floating-point exclusive workload on the handheld, and maxed out its clock-rate to 561 Mhz, it would achieve ~ 1.72 TFlops. 

And we already explained pages ago why your power-argument which is based on the fact it is using an 8N/10N node doesn't incorporate the whole picture. 

I am guessing you're going to be in denial on this until we actually have software measuring 561Mhz clock rates on jailbroken Switch 2's. And when that happens, it is a measurable fact that the Switch 2's GPU is capable (with the right workload) of 1.72 TFLOPs in handheld mode because floating-point performance is a function of clock-rate, core-count with a constant factor for each given micro-architecture and target precision.

For Ampere, 

Max FP32 throughput = 2 *(Core Frequency)*Core Count/1000. 

2*(561Mhz per core)*1536 cores/1000 = 1723.39 GFLOPs or 1.72339 TFLOPs.

And yes, there probably will be lower-clock handheld modes for battery life in less demanding games, but that doesn't mean no game will be hitting the 561Mhz peak.

Last edited by sc94597 - on 24 May 2025

Switch 2 vs Steam Deck for Cyberpunk 2077, this is total domination for Switch 2



Soundwave said:

Switch 2 vs Steam Deck for Cyberpunk 2077, this is total domination for Switch 2

Also the Steam Deck version is running at an internal resolution of about 424p here (FSR 2.1 Balanced @ 720p.) So not too far from the minimum internal resolution of the Switch 2 version (60% of the 540p docked mode, 140% of 360p handheld mode.) 

The Switch 2 version might be using the rumored DRS + DLSS mode though, and the internal resolution might be varying. 

Regardless 1080p DLSS performance >> 720p FSR 2.1 Balanced.

It'll be interesting to see how handheld mode compares. I am guessing it will look somewhere closer to the Switch 2 docked mode than the Steam Deck in perceived quality given people's impressions and the older handheld footage from a month ago.

Last edited by sc94597 - on 24 May 2025