Wednesday, September 13th 2023
Nintendo Switch 2 to Feature NVIDIA Ampere GPU with DLSS
The rumors of Nintendo's next-generation Switch handheld gaming console have been piling up ever since the competition in the handheld console market got more intense. Since the release of the original Switch, Valve has released Steam Deck, ASUS made ROG Ally, and others are also exploring the market. However, the next-generation Nintendo Switch 2 is closer and closer, as we have information about the chipset that will power this device. Thanks to Kepler_L2 on Twitter/X, we have the codenames of the upcoming processors. The first generation Switch came with NVIDIA's Tegra X1 SoC built on a 20 nm node. However, later on, NVIDIA supplied Nintendo with a Tegra X1+ SoC made on a 16 nm node. There were no performance increases recorded, just improved power efficiency. Both of them used four Cortex-A57 and four Cortex-A53 cores with GM20B Maxwell GPUs.
For the Nintendo Switch 2, NVIDIA is said to utilize a customized variant of NVIDIA Jetson Orin SoC for automotive applications. The reference Orin SoC carries a codename T234, while this alleged adaptation has a T239 codename; the version is most likely optimized for power efficiency. The reference Orin design is a considerable uplift compared to the Tegra X1, as it boasts 12 Cortex-A78AE cores and LPDDR5 memory, along with Ampere GPU microarchitecture. Built on Samsung's 8 nm node, the efficiency would likely yield better battery life and position the second-generation Switch well among the now extended handheld gaming console market. However, including Ampere architecture would also bring technologies like DLSS, which would benefit the low-power SoC.
Sources:
@Kepler_L2, GitHub, via Tom's Hardware
For the Nintendo Switch 2, NVIDIA is said to utilize a customized variant of NVIDIA Jetson Orin SoC for automotive applications. The reference Orin SoC carries a codename T234, while this alleged adaptation has a T239 codename; the version is most likely optimized for power efficiency. The reference Orin design is a considerable uplift compared to the Tegra X1, as it boasts 12 Cortex-A78AE cores and LPDDR5 memory, along with Ampere GPU microarchitecture. Built on Samsung's 8 nm node, the efficiency would likely yield better battery life and position the second-generation Switch well among the now extended handheld gaming console market. However, including Ampere architecture would also bring technologies like DLSS, which would benefit the low-power SoC.
117 Comments on Nintendo Switch 2 to Feature NVIDIA Ampere GPU with DLSS
These consoles still have no support for DLSS, remember...
It's their closed source drivers that cause them problems, but the switch is a slow-changing platform that can work within those limitsIt doesn't stand a chance against them, if it's meant for the switch it's phone level hardware - DLSS doesn't run any better than FSR would, it just tends to look slightly better.
The Orin chip its based on is a 50W part that might compete with the consoles if it used DLSS and they were native res, but the lower power variant in the switch will be <10W and not even come close. It's not meant to.
So perhaps not purchase the first version of Switch 2 either.. if it comes out next year you'd expect 5 or 6nm
This is part of the reason Ada's efficiency looks so good, too.
I mean wow. Nvidia finally found a way to get even more inferior parts to market. Bloody bottom feeders
Ampere not 4xxx series, god dammit. At least give latest generation...
It will be interesting to see how this Ampere derivative performs, and if DLSS is an always-on thing for "Switch 2". If so it would be a major win for NVIDIA in increasing adoption of that technology, although given it's Ampere not Ada the latest implementation of DLSS is off the table.
Personally, I am doubting the rumors that T239 will be manufactured on Samsung 8nm. It would be really disappointing if that ends up being true, but I guess we should be used to Nintendo disappointing us by now.
Now Switch going Ada is a necessity to also fight the new X86 handheld consoles. I wonder if Nintendo will start investing more in visuals in the future.
Anyway, AMD needs to improve it's hardware in RT. Now this is Ada, so probably future AMD based consoles would probably beat it. Handhelds like Rog? Probably not or will be close. AMD needs to realize that it needs to improve considerably performance of RT in it's future RDNA architecture. If not Switch 2, another gaming platform, even a typical desktop console based on Nvidia hardware, could be a disaster for AMD's image in consoles. And AMD needs those billions from Sony and MS, not to mention games build for it's hardware first, or Radeon will end.
RT also doesn't scale down linearly on resolution and consumes a lot of system RAM capacity and bandwidth, neither of which Nintendo is known to invest a lot on.
Furthermore, people ought to realize that the optimization and proportion of hardware dedicated to RT in AMD's GPU architectures are highly influenced by Sony and Microsoft themselves. They can't have the luxury of shipping a console with a 600mm^2 discrete GPU with its own 384bit bus of 24GB GDDR6 VRAM consuming 350W.
Consoles are budget machines and traditional rasterization techniques are immensely more power and cost-effective at displaying high quality graphics than raytracing. That's the case now and was even more so in 2020.
If Sony and Microsoft want better raytracing performance on their future consoles, or even dedicated tensor cores, AMD will provide as such. But the console makers will do so at the cost of losing transistors and die area that would otherwise be spent on programmable shader processors, or e.g. last-level-cache, or Infinity Fabric glue to allow for chiplets, etc.
Everything that's needed is on the chip, there's just a bit too much of everything on this chip :
12 A18 cores at 2.2Ghz max : Coming from 4 a57 at 1Ghz on the original
2048 gpu core at 1.3Ghz max : Coming from 256 at 384Mhz
256 bits LPDDR5 bus : Coming from 64 bits DDR4
Bonus : AV1 encode/decode up to 2x 4K60, 22 UPHY lanes shared between pcie, usb 3.2 and MGBE
Source : www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/gtcf21/jetson-orin/nvidia-jetson-agx-orin-technical-brief.pdf
So yeah I wouldn't mind if they slashed this chip in half as it would likely increase efficiency further than just clocking down or disabling units.
However as long as castrating this chip is cheaper than making a smaller/newer one, I guess that's what Nintendo will choose.
In a few years every engine will have a comparable built-in technology and RT will be forgotten like PhysX.
What matters for the switch 2 is for it to look good enough and run current games, while also retaining the portable aspect. (would be nice if their joysticks aren't defective this time around...)