Over the past few months, leaks and rumors about the Nintendo Switch 2 have intensified to the point that we lots of new information which solves many doubts about this long-awaited console. This information also represents an important update to the special we published at the time, so we decided to create a completely new and up-to-date article.

Nintendo itself confirmed some of these leaks quite clearly, so almost everything we will see in this new article has a lot of reliability. However, there are things that are yet to be confirmed, such as the Nintendo Switch 2 specs, so keep that in mind before reading this article.

It may happen that we will find some surprises after the launch of this console, but in general, I am completely convinced that there will be no important changes in everything that we will tell you in this article, and that all possible modifications Eventually it will be less.

Nintendo Switch 2 design: thinner and bigger

The new Nintendo console will repeat the approach of the original model, which means that it will be a portable console and that it can be used as a desktop console thanks to the included dock. The most important change it will have compared to the original will be its screen size, which It will range from 7 to 8 inches.

The Nintendo Switch 2 will be bigger, but it could have slimmer chassis than the original model. We also expect changes in the design of the JoyCon, which will have a more rounded surface, although it will retain the same layout and almost the same number of buttons, as this new console is expected to include a new dedicated button for capturing content and two new buttons on the back.

The JoyCon will be detachable, allowing you to use the console in dock mode without having to buy an additional controller. It remains to be seen if Nintendo will make any changes to the build quality and materials, but I don’t think so. Most likely, this new console will be completely built made of plastic, a durable and inexpensive material.

Nintendo Switch 2 Specs

• An 8-inch LCD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and a refresh rate of 60 Hz It is rumored that this screen could have a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels.
• NVIDIA Tegra SoC customized and built on Samsung’s 5nm node.
• ARM processor with eight 64-bit cores based on the Cortex-A78C architecture at 2 GHz.
• NVIDIA’s own GPU based on the Ampere architecture with exclusive Ada Lovelace features and efficiency improvements.
• The GPU will have between 1,280 and 1,536 shaders running at 750 MHz in laptop mode. In dock mode, the frequency would increase and could approach 1000 MHz.
• 12 GB LPDDR5X unified memory with a speed of 7500 Mb/s with a 128-bit bus (120 GB/s bandwidth).
• UFS 3.1 storage unit with a capacity of 256 GB and a maximum sequential read speed of 2,100 MB/s.

I remember that the first rumors assumed that the Nintendo Switch 2 would use a 1080p panel, but the latest information is not so clear and believes that in terms of power, this console will be configured with a 720p panel. This resolution is much less demandingand the truth is, seeing these possible specs makes a lot of sense.

Moving to an 8-core processor would be enough to get the multi-threaded performance needed to move current games and facilitate cross-platform ports. The same can be said for the 12 GB of LPDDR5X memory, a number that exceeds the 10 GB of memory that the Xbox Series S has, although it uses GDDR6, which is faster. It is very likely that the 12 GB they are free for games between 10GB and 11GB.

The GPU will be the most important part of the Nintendo Switch 2. This console will have an NVIDIA solution based on Ampere Architecture, albeit with Ada Lovelace optimization and could come in two different configurations. Depending on the configuration Nintendo chose, the differences in performance would be significant.

For example, if a less powerful version is used, we should:

• 1,280 shaders at up to 750 MHz in portable mode, up to 1,000 MHz in dock mode.
• 20 SM units.
• 80 texturing units.
• 32 raster units.
• 80 tensor cores of the third generation.
• 20 second generation RT cores.
• 1.28 MB L2 cache.
• 128-bit bus, bandwidth up to 120 GB/s (depending on LPDDR5X speed).

This configuration would be even below the GeForce RTX 2050 Mobile, which has 2,048 shaders and also uses the Ampere architecture. His peak power would be 1.92 TFLOP in portable mode and 2.56 TFLOP in dock mode.

If Nintendo decided to plug in the most powerful GPU, it would be configured like this:

• 1,536 shaders at up to 750 MHz in portable mode, up to 1,000 MHz in dock mode.
• 24 SM units.
• 96 texturing units.
• 48 raster units.
• 96 tensor cores of the third generation.
• 24 second generation RT cores.
• 1.53 MB L2 cache.
• 128-bit bus, bandwidth up to 120 GB/s (depending on LPDDR5X speed).

In this case we would have total power 2.30 TFLOP in portable mode and 3.07 TFLOP in dock mode.

Performance, comparative performance and ideal resolution

The performance figures we saw from the Nintendo Switch 2 GPU would give us very decent performance for natively moving games at 1080p resolution. For an idea The GeForce GTX 1650 achieves 2.94 TFLOPs power in the FP32, meaning that at best this console would be only slightly more powerful than that, in docked mode.

Fortunately, when we’re talking about games, TFLOPs They are not the only thing that matters. The new console from Nintendo will use a much more advanced architecture and will have support for NVIDIA DLSS, an intelligent scaling technology that is accelerated using tensor cores, which will allow the console to render games with 50% of required pixels and scale from there to the target resolution.

This clever rescaling maintains a higher level of detail and image quality than the rescaling ones without AI or hardware acceleration, that means it’s much better than AMD FSR. In all the years I’ve been testing, I’ve been able to verify that NVIDIA DLSS in performance mode equals or even slightly exceeds AMD FSR in quality mode.

If the Nintendo Switch 2 uses a 1080p display, with DLSS can render games in 540p and scale to that resolution. This would make it possible to significantly reduce the demands of the game, but in current titles using such demanding graphics engines as Unreal Engine 5, this may not be enough to achieve a good level of fluidity with such a limited GPU and such low consumption.

For this reason, I said that using a 720p screen might be a better choice on the Nintendo Switch 2, as it would help achieve adequate performance in even the most demanding games. In this case, the games could be render in 360p and upscale to 720pnumbers that would make more than a significant difference.

NVIDIA DLSS in balanced mode on the left and AMD FSR in quality mode on the right in Alan Wake 2.

Nintendo could also use NVIDIA DLSS in other modes. For example, there is an ultra performance mode it only renders 33% of the pixels and scales from there to the target resolution, but this mode is very aggressive and can significantly reduce image quality and sharpness, so it would not be recommended if the target resolution is 1080p or lower.

Using NVIDIA DLSS in performance mode could improve gaming performance by 40% to 60%, depending on the specific requirements of each title, as well as whether it’s a more CPU- or GPU-dependent game. This should be enough to play current titles (Unreal Engine 5). 720p upscaled and stable 30 FPS.

In docked mode, the ability to play in 1080p upscaled from the 540p offered in current-gen games and in higher resolutions for games from the original Nintendo Switch, which of course They are much less demanding. It will be interesting to see how Nintendo resolves this duality of running current and previous generation games.

The UFS 3.1 storage unit will be a very big improvement over the current console, as it has an eMMC 5.1 solution that barely reaches 300MB/s. With a speed of 2,100 MB/s, the Nintendo Switch 2 to the present generation (Xbox Series X and Series S have 2400MB/s SSDs) and that will mean:

• Lower loading times.
• Compatibility with current graphics engines.
• Easier cross-platform ports without major sacrifices.
• Games with bigger worlds and no loading screens.

Release date and price

In the middle of the year we saw rumors that the Nintendo Switch 2 could be introduced in October, but in the end it didn’t happen and from the date we’re on the ground it’s clear that already It will not be introduced in 2024.

Nintendo itself shed light on the fact that this new console will arrive between the first and second quarters of 2025so it should be presented between the months of January and February and launched between the months of March and April.

There is an explanation for this, which is that the big N wants to finish cleaning out the Nintendo Switch stock it has accumulated, and introducing its successor before the Christmas campaign would be a big mistake because would drive away all interest in the Nintendo Switch 2 and this would negatively affect sales of the original model.

You already know how it works, if I know that a new console will be available in a few months, it’s very likely that I as a consumer would rather wait for it to launch instead of buying the original model that will eventually become “obsolete” in a very short time.

As for the price, we don’t have official information yet, but it is most likely that the Nintendo Switch 2 will eventually hit the market with an approximate price between $400 and $500. In exchange and after taxes are applied, these numbers should become 459 euros and 574 eurosrespectively

What games will be available at launch

The Nintendo Switch 2 will play with an important advantage at the time of its launch, which is that it will backwards compatible with Nintendo Switchwhich means we can play all her games on the new Nintendo console.

Logically, it should also reach the market accompanied by news, although unfortunately nothing has yet emerged in this regard, so we have no idea at this point what Nintendo is planning.

Nintendo Switch 2 images: YouTube.