NVIDIA Confirms 4K And DLSS Support For Nintendo Switch 2 Games

by · HotHardware

Nintendo's Switch console is based on a now-aged NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC, and it has been rumored for more than a year that the Switch 2 would make use of an updated NVIDIA chip, likely based on the Tegra processor code-named "Orin". We still don't have 100% firm confirmation of that, but there's a new detail that reinforces that impression: NVIDIA itself specifically posting that the Switch 2 uses (or can use) DLSS.

The Tegra T239 processor purportedly used in the Switch 2, which is supposedly code-named "Drake," is said to have eight Arm Cortex-A78C CPU cores, a 128-bit LPDDR5X memory interface, and critically for this story, an integrated GPU based on the Ampere architecture with 12 shader modules, giving it 1,536 "CUDA cores," as NVIDIA likes to count them.

Hard to believe that Ampere is nearly five years old already.

Ampere is the GPU architecture that powered the GeForce RTX 30 series, and of course, it includes third-generation tensor cores. So it goes that the Switch 2's integrated GPU should be fully capable of running NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), the company's famous AI-powered upscaler. DLSS provides generally superior results versus earlier versions of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution—particularly the original spatial "FSR1" algorithm that was used in many Switch 1 games.

NVIDIA's blog post on the topic remarks that the Switch 2 embodies "1,000 engineer-years of effort across every element," and goes on to say that the GPU in the Switch 2 is in fact a "custom GPU." It may be the case that the GPU component in the Switch 2's SoC has some customizations for Nintendo's product—or it could simply be a configuration that isn't used elsewhere.

Metroid Prime 4 Beyond should deliver impressive performance on Switch 2.

Whatever the case, NVIDIA notes that it is indeed capable of making use of DLSS along with AI-powered face tracking and background removal for Nintendo's GameChat feature, and we suspect the advanced noise cancellation and voice isolation technology used with that feature is likely also AI-powered. NVIDIA somewhat shatters the dream that the Switch 2 may have an NPU for these purposes by noting that Tensor Cores are used for them.

According to the chipmaker, the GPU in the Nintendo Switch 2 is fully ten times faster than the one in the original system. That certainly explains how it is able to achieve 60 FPS at 4K on certain games (Metroid Prime 4 Beyond and Fast Fusion). NVIDIA implies that DLSS is in use, although we weren't able to spot any telltale signs of it in the Direct livestream. We're interested to investigate more once the system comes out in June.