Tuesday, September 24th 2024
Nintendo Switch 2 Allegedly Not Powered by AMD APU Due to Poor Battery Life
Nintendo's next-generation Switch 2 handheld gaming console is nearing its release. As leaks intensify about its future specifications, we get information about its planning stages. According to Moore's Law is Dead YouTube video, we learn that Nintendo didn't choose AMD APU to be the powerhouse behind Switch 2 due to poor battery life. In a bid to secure the best chip at a mere five watts of power, the Japanese company had two choices: NVIDIA Tegra or AMD APU. With some preliminary testing and evaluation, AMD APU wasn't reportedly power-efficient at 5 Watt TDP, while the NVIDIA Tegra chip was maintaining sufficient battery life and performance at target specifications.
Allegedly the AMD APU was good for 15 W design, but Nintendo didn't want to place a bigger battery so that the device remains lighter and cheaper. The final design will likely carry a battery with a 20 Wh capacity, which will be the main power source behind the NVIDIA Tegra T239 SoC. As a reminder, the Tegra T239 SoC features eight-core Arm A78C cluster with modified NVIDIA Ampere cores in combination with DLSS, featuring some of the latest encoding/decoding elements from Ada Lovelace, like AV1. There are likely 1536 CUDA cores paired with 128-bit LPDDR5 memory running at 102 GB/s bandwidth. For final specifications, we have to wait for the official launch, but with rumors starting to intensify, we can expect to see it relatively soon.
Sources:
Moore's Law is Dead, via Wccftech
Allegedly the AMD APU was good for 15 W design, but Nintendo didn't want to place a bigger battery so that the device remains lighter and cheaper. The final design will likely carry a battery with a 20 Wh capacity, which will be the main power source behind the NVIDIA Tegra T239 SoC. As a reminder, the Tegra T239 SoC features eight-core Arm A78C cluster with modified NVIDIA Ampere cores in combination with DLSS, featuring some of the latest encoding/decoding elements from Ada Lovelace, like AV1. There are likely 1536 CUDA cores paired with 128-bit LPDDR5 memory running at 102 GB/s bandwidth. For final specifications, we have to wait for the official launch, but with rumors starting to intensify, we can expect to see it relatively soon.
83 Comments on Nintendo Switch 2 Allegedly Not Powered by AMD APU Due to Poor Battery Life
I know CUDA cores, but never heard about DLSS cores.
What I will like to see is if it delivers the same performance at 5 watts compared to the 15w stated for AMD.
Another rumor was that they wanted backwards compatibility, which would make sense to stay with Ngreedia.
I know the mighty company NVIDIA and mediocre AMD.
The PS5 Pro moving away from FSR was a fantastic move, and made the variable resolution + upscaling much less noticeable compared to any of the other current gen consoles, which are blurry messes every time I have the unfortunate experience of witnessing their output. Still, shame there's no games for the platform.
I suspect the Switch 2 will be a rather excellent device.
"One of the major challenges faced by Nvidia was the high-power consumption of its Tegra processors. This led to poor battery life in mobile devices, a significant drawback for consumers who prioritize battery efficiency.31 Jan 2024"
As for the actual content at hand..
I've certainly had DLSS (and to a lesser extent FSR and XeSS) reduce power consumption so I can see why the benefits are readily apparent for a handheld. It hopefully also allows for higher than 1080p output when in docked mode, something like DLSS Ultra Performance so 720p->2160p when docked, or even a dynamic input res with fixed output res with an FPS target. Even 720p looks quite nice on my switch OLED so I don't really have any concerns about handheld IQ for a switch 2.
But a portable console is a different animal. Yes battery life matters, a lot, ditto power consumption, but unlike a tablet it's not a device you expect to be able to use all day, or for several days, and not have to charge.Who cares? They wanted backwards compatability, which is admirable, but that means they were going to go Tegra again.
Nah, Switch has yet to overtake the DS and the GameBoy/GBC isn't much behind. Just summing up all the pre-Switch Nintendo handhelds would be more than 3 times current Switch sales. This is not taking any other manufacturers into account. The DS alone was BIG. Like, massive.
Original switch benefited from the pandemic but it's got more competition than ever now.
True, but there are a lot of people who buy "Nintendo", not just "a handheld console", and that counts for quite a lot. One doesn't get your Zeldas, Marios and Fire Emblems on the Deck. Plus, there is Japan - a traditionally strong market for Nintendo (the aforementioned DS draws a lot of its success from there) and with just as traditional aversion for PC gaming.
So it will be interesting to see what happens when we restart the clock and how the Switch 2 fares against these new handheld console contenders; most of which have AMD chips.