Experts Digital Foundry reported the full specifications of the hardware platform of the Nintendo Switch 2 gaming console.Although Nintendo itself has told quite a lot about the novelty in the framework of the announcement, there are still some details that cause interest. In particular, we are talking about the architecture of the console’s single-chip platform and its potential performance.
The Switch 2 is based on Nvidia’s T239 hardware platform, officially referred to as an “Nvidia custom chip”. The CPU contains eight Cortex-A78C processing cores, six of which are available for gaming, while two are reserved for system operations. It is currently unknown whether developers will be able to change the allocation of these resources in any way.
According to Digital Foundry, the processor cores run at 1100 MHz in portable mode. In stationary mode (when connected to a docking station), the frequency drops to 998 MHz. The reason for this difference is unknown – neither Nintendo nor Digital Foundry have provided an explanation. It’s also confirmed that the maximum CPU frequency is 1.67GHz, which leaves the potential for some scaling in the future.
The console’s GPU is based on Nvidia’s Ampere architecture and contains 1,536 CUDA cores. In portable mode, the GPU frequency is 561 MHz, while in stationary mode it goes up to 1007 MHz. The maximum frequency of the GPU is 1400 MHz. This configuration theoretically allows Switch 2 to provide up to 3 Tflops of performance when computing with reduced precision data in stationary mode and up to 4.3 Tflops when the CPU and GPU are overclocked to maximum frequencies.
Digital Foundry also notes that the console gets 12GB of LPDDR5X memory, of which 9GB is available for gaming and 3GB is reserved for the operating system. In stationary mode, the memory runs at 102GB/s bandwidth, while in portable mode, it’s rated at 68GB/s.
The video published by Digital Foundry also discusses the improvements in storage and decompression technologies in the new Switch 2.