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Forums - Nintendo - Nintendo Switch 2 Tech Performance Discussion

 

Switch 2 is out! How you classify?

Terribly outdated! 4 5.56%
 
Outdated 2 2.78%
 
Slightly outdated 17 23.61%
 
On point 40 55.56%
 
High tech! 7 9.72%
 
A mixed bag 2 2.78%
 
Total:72
Chrkeller on 17 April 2026
sc94597 said:

Most of the SW2's performance issues are from its CPU bottleneck.

Nintendo really should free up the CPU allocations dedicated to Gamechat or at least give users the option while still requiring developers to target 30fps for when Gamechat is on.

Gamechat is a useless feature for many of us.

Edit: Pragmata and the Resident Evil games probably could get closer to their 60fps targets with an extra CPU core. 

I feel the same with all consoles.  Whatever resources social features take, let me turn them off.  Never used them, never will.  



rtx 4090, 32 gb ram, i7-13700k

Switch 2

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Soundwave on 17 April 2026
sc94597 said:

Most of the SW2's performance issues are from its CPU bottleneck.

Nintendo really should free up the CPU allocations dedicated to Gamechat or at least give users the option while still requiring developers to target 30fps for when Gamechat is on.

Gamechat is a useless feature for many of us.

Edit: Pragmata and the Resident Evil games probably could get closer to their 60fps targets with an extra CPU core. 

They probably will do that over time. Honestly the amount of people who use Gamechat is maybe 5% of the userbase and that's likely being generous (especially once you have to pay for it). It's fine to have for fun/social Nintendo games, but really how many people are using Gamechat to play a game like Pragmata or Resident Evil 9? It's likely a very, very small group.

Or at least give consumers the option of turning it off in some games if you're not using it to increase performance. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 17 April 2026

curl-6 on 19 April 2026

Yeah Gamechat resources should be able to be unlocked on a game-by-game basis; I believe this was already done on Switch 1 where some games that really pushed the hardware didn't support video capture or screenshotting in order to free up every byte and cycle, so there's a precedent for the same being done on Switch 2.



LipeJJ on 20 April 2026
curl-6 said:

Yeah Gamechat resources should be able to be unlocked on a game-by-game basis; I believe this was already done on Switch 1 where some games that really pushed the hardware didn't support video capture or screenshotting in order to free up every byte and cycle, so there's a precedent for the same being done on Switch 2.

Yeah, that's why I believe it's coming out eventually in a future update and devs will be grateful for it.



Bet with Teeqoz for 2 weeks of avatar and sig control that Super Mario Odyssey would ship more than 7m on its first 2 months. The game shipped 9.07m, so I won

curl-6 5 days ago

Thanks for Chrkeller for the heads up on this one; Digital Foundry did an interview with FF7 Rebirth's director on porting the game to Switch 2:

https://www.digitalfoundry.net/features/this-was-the-crucial-factor-how-final-fantasy-7-rebirth-arrived-on-switch-2

One interesting tidbit is that it confirms the Switch 2 versions retains mesh shading, one of the bells and whistles in the current gen toolbox.



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Chrkeller 5 days ago
curl-6 said:

Thanks for Chrkeller for the heads up on this one; Digital Foundry did an interview with FF7 Rebirth's director on porting the game to Switch 2:

https://www.digitalfoundry.net/features/this-was-the-crucial-factor-how-final-fantasy-7-rebirth-arrived-on-switch-2

One interesting tidbit is that it confirms the Switch 2 versions retains mesh shading, one of the bells and whistles in the current gen toolbox.

Third party support is better than I expected, meaning the custom port aspect with Rebirth and Outlaws.  Which is a great thing, a pure port of the ps5 version would be a disaster IMO (from a fps perspective).  I don't give Square or Ubi credit often, but they deserve credit here.  

Looking at a few videos the biggest differences in Rebirth are vegetation, shadows, lighting and volumetric.  Reasonable cutbacks.

Hopefully games do well on the S2 and ports continue getting customization.  I still think the biggest issue with the Series S are games being ported as is, that doesn't work.    



rtx 4090, 32 gb ram, i7-13700k

Switch 2

sc94597 5 days ago
With so many games having trade-offs between Series S and Switch 2, I think I am a bit vindicated with my perspective when I bet a now perma-banned user three years ago. 
sc94597 said:

banned user said:

sc94597 said:

DLSS 3.0 is an entirely different beast from DLSS 2.0. DLSS 2.0 improves image quality beyond the internal render resolution regardless of that render resolution and even is better than native target resolution in numerous cases. Even FSR does this, which is why there are countless videos of how best to use FSR with the Steam Deck (native resolution of 1280 x 800) to improve battery life with minimal image-quality loss (if any.) 

DLSS 3.0, because the goal is temporal interpolation (producing missing frames, and not just missing pixels) has a few quirks that will have to be worked out. But the Switch 2 likely won't even support DLSS 3.0 anyway. Ampere's Optical Flow Accelerator (OFA) isn't fast enough. That's why the 3000 series Nvidia GPU's don't have DLSS 3.0 (or at least according to Nvidia that is why, which seemed suspect until they announced 3.5 for all RTX GPU's.) 

One of the things that has hindered the original Switch is that games have to work well in both portable and docked mode, and in portable mode you can't have a battery life of 30 minutes because the game is pushing the platform to its limits. DLSS 2.0 allows for far more flexibility in this sphere, even for Nintendo themselves. You'll rarely have situations where resolution falls to 360p (i.e Xenoblade 2), for example, like we've seen on the Switch. 

My guess is that the internal resolution will always be between 720p - 1080p, and the effective resolution (after applying DLSS) will be between 1080p and 1440p when docked, with many games targeting 60fps that wouldn't otherwise have. If Nintendo were savvy, they'd put a VRR screen in the device, and many games could even target stable 40fps or 50fps without much screen-tearing. 

While PS5 level visuals/framerates is indeed hyperbolic, being able to meet or even exceed the Series S in many cases (or at least there will be trade-offs where there is no clear better version) is certainly doable. That is all the Switch 2 needs to do to keep up with the current generation. 

Aright let's make a bet then. Most ports will be inferior to series S. Winner get's to put a signature on the bottom of each post of what ever he wants.

Alright, with a few conditions. 

1. The comparison would be between a docked Switch 2 and a Series S. An undocked Switch 2 with an Orin architecture likely would be between the Steam Deck and a Series S (which aren't really that far apart anyway, see Digital Foundry's video "Steam Deck vs. Xbox Series S".) 

2. If the Switch isn't using an Orin architecture (or something comparable, like say a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2) but something else, then the bet is void. For example, if Nintendo negotiates a Tegra Thor (with ADA Lovelace architecture) -- the Switch 2, even as a portable, almost certainly will match a Series S, even without DLSS being a big boon for it. An RTX 4050 laptop is almost twice as powerful as the Series S, and one would expect a Tegra Thor chip to be something like 60-70% as powerful as a full-powered AD107 (chip in an RTX 4050 laptop.) 

3. We define "superior" as the tie-breaker between: a. more stable; higher framerates, b. effective image quality, and c. visual/graphics effects. So if Series S is better in the first two, but worse in the third it wins that game. If they are comparable on one category, one is better on the other, and the other is better on the third category, then that is considered a draw (1 Switch 2, 1 Neutral, 1 Series S.) Digital Foundry videos can be used as the neutral metric of comparison. 

4. At least five multiplatform releases need to happen before we call the bet. 


Chrkeller 5 days ago
sc94597 said:
With so many games having trade-offs between Series S and Switch 2, I think I am a bit vindicated with my perspective when I bet a now perma-banned user three years ago. 
sc94597 said:

Alright, with a few conditions. 

1. The comparison would be between a docked Switch 2 and a Series S. An undocked Switch 2 with an Orin architecture likely would be between the Steam Deck and a Series S (which aren't really that far apart anyway, see Digital Foundry's video "Steam Deck vs. Xbox Series S".) 

2. If the Switch isn't using an Orin architecture (or something comparable, like say a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2) but something else, then the bet is void. For example, if Nintendo negotiates a Tegra Thor (with ADA Lovelace architecture) -- the Switch 2, even as a portable, almost certainly will match a Series S, even without DLSS being a big boon for it. An RTX 4050 laptop is almost twice as powerful as the Series S, and one would expect a Tegra Thor chip to be something like 60-70% as powerful as a full-powered AD107 (chip in an RTX 4050 laptop.) 

3. We define "superior" as the tie-breaker between: a. more stable; higher framerates, b. effective image quality, and c. visual/graphics effects. So if Series S is better in the first two, but worse in the third it wins that game. If they are comparable on one category, one is better on the other, and the other is better on the third category, then that is considered a draw (1 Switch 2, 1 Neutral, 1 Series S.) Digital Foundry videos can be used as the neutral metric of comparison. 

4. At least five multiplatform releases need to happen before we call the bet. 

Personal opinion, I think the Series S has superior ports, because of better fps.  Switch 2, often, has cleaner image.  But for Pragmata, RE9, Rebirth, etc...  I would take the superior framerate.  

But the gap is closer than most, including myself, thought it would be, which is more your point.



rtx 4090, 32 gb ram, i7-13700k

Switch 2

sc94597 5 days ago
Chrkeller said:
sc94597 said:
With so many games having trade-offs between Series S and Switch 2, I think I am a bit vindicated with my perspective when I bet a now perma-banned user three years ago. 

Personal opinion, I think the Series S has superior ports, because of better fps.  Switch 2, often, has cleaner image.  But for Pragmata, RE9, Rebirth, etc...  I would take the superior framerate.  

But the gap is closer than most, including myself, thought it would be, which is more your point.

Yeah if somebody prefers higher frame-rates at the cost of everything else then the Series S versions are the better options (when there is a framerate difference from SW2, some games don't have one), but I think if somebody is very frame-rate sensitive the Series S won't be (nor the Switch 2 really, unless they really like to play handheld) their platform of choice anyway. 

The casual/low-spec gamer probably would notice the image-quality difference (at sub-1080p resolutions) more than (stable) 30fps vs 60fps. As an example, performance mode for Rebirth - on the Series S, just doesn't seem to be worth the image quality downgrade requisite to get it there and the difference between it and Switch 2 on graphics mode are marginal.

It's only once internal resolutions exceed 1080p where I think casual gamers will more likely notice framerate differences than resolution ones. 



Chrkeller 5 days ago
sc94597 said:
Chrkeller said:

Personal opinion, I think the Series S has superior ports, because of better fps.  Switch 2, often, has cleaner image.  But for Pragmata, RE9, Rebirth, etc...  I would take the superior framerate.  

But the gap is closer than most, including myself, thought it would be, which is more your point.

Yeah if somebody prefers higher frame-rates at the cost of everything else then the Series S versions are the better options (when there is a framerate difference from SW2, some games don't have one), but I think if somebody is very frame-rate sensitive the Series S won't be (nor the Switch 2 really, unless they really like to play handheld) their platform of choice anyway. 

The casual/low-spec gamer probably would notice the image-quality difference (at sub-1080p resolutions) more than (stable) 30fps vs 60fps. As an example, performance mode for Rebirth - on the Series S, just doesn't seem to be worth the image quality downgrade requisite to get it there and the difference between it and Switch 2 on graphics mode are marginal.

It's only once internal resolutions exceed 1080p where I think casual gamers will more likely notice framerate differences than resolution ones. 

Certainly depends on the game.  Based on videos RE9 drops from 60 fps to low 30s, and no vrr in docked mode, that would drive me crazy.  Rebirth, based on demo, hits low 20s, which would drive me nuts.  I would take the Series S in those cases.  Not sure on the others, I don't follow too closely, because I go PC.  

On PC i often sacrifice resolution for fps.  1440p/120fps > 4k/60fps.   

I also thought Prime 4 at 1080p/120fps was vastly superior to 4k/60fps.  

I could be the outlier but I find resolution overrated while fps is fantastic.



rtx 4090, 32 gb ram, i7-13700k

Switch 2