With the unveiling of the Nintendo Switch 2 rumoured to be at hand, a new leak has popped up that might give us an idea of the horsepower under the hood of the new console. In a post on the Famiboards forums, user Zachy claims to have discovered the compute speed of the Nintendo Switch 2’s hardware.
According to Zachy, the Switch’s GPU will be able to hit a clock speed of 561 MHz, which would roughly translate to around 1.71 TFLOPS (a measurement of how many floating point operations hardware can complete in a second). This is for when the Switch 2 is used in handheld mode. Docked mode, on the other hand, will offer a considerable power boost, doubling the clock speed up to 1000 MHz, coming in at around 3.1 TFLOPS.
For context, the Nintendo Switch 2 is rumoured to be running on an Nvidia Tegra 239 SoC, which is considerably less powerful than the last few generations of desktop processors and GPUs. On the other hand, the hardware is still a considerable upgrade over the original Switch. While these numbers do give us a useful look at the potential power behind the hardware, it is worth noting that real-world use cases for the power tends to be different.
Going by the relatively lower power of the hardware in the upcoming Switch 2, it looks like the previously-rumoured image upscaling in the console will see quite a bit of use when it is launched. These previous leaks have indicated that the Switch 2 will be equipped with a neural net for AI-based image upscaling, which will allow lower-resolution visuals to be rendered at 1080p or even 4K without losing too much in fidelity or clarity.
The Switch 2 reveal rumoured to take place later today is slated to be a showcase of the new console’s hardware, with no games being present during the presentation. Rumours of the presentation happening today came about thanks to reliable industry insider Nate the Hate on a podcast hosted last week.
Among the rumours about the Nintendo Switch 2 that have been making the rounds for quite some time is a picture of the new console’s dock, which indicates that, owing to higher voltage requirements, the new console will be incompatible with the original Switch’s charger. The console will also seemingly have a new mounting mechanism for its JoyCon controllers, complete with a new trigger-styled button to slide the JoyCons off.
We’ve also gotten a look at what the logo for the Switch 2 will look like, being quite similar to the original Switch logo, with the addition of a giant ‘2’ to signify that it is definitely new console hardware.
On the software front, while Nintendo has been quiet about the console in that regard as well, rumours have indicated that heavy hitters like the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will be making their way to the Switch 2. Ubisoft is also rumoured to be working on bringing a host of its games to the new console.
