Topic: Game Performance Questions (Handheld vs Docked)

Hi guys. I know that there is some performance difference between handheld and docked modes, but is there a general rule of thumb by how much of a difference? Or, does it vary by each game? For games like FF7 Remake and Rebirth, is the performance difference much more noticeable? Just wondering what you guys think. Thoughts appreciated

@OmegaX83 it always vary between games so best to just find it on each one through online search

From leaks, because Nintendo have been coy about Switch 2 performance, it appears to be roughly twice as powerful when docked.

How to use that comes down to the developers, though. In most cases they'll sacrifice resolution and image quality to maintain the same frame rate; and that includes the FF7 remakes. Other games might run at higher frame rates when docked, though, and for some there will be no discernible difference at all.

I don't think this is true "in most cases"? I haven't played the FF7 remakes, but I own 20+ Switch 2 games, and almost all of them run at native 1080p resolution in handheld mode, even the more demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws.

@Polvasti No, they don't. Almost all the most demanding games are rendered well below native resolution and upscaled by DLSS. Based on what Digital Foundry have said, Outlaws runs at around 720p docked and 540p handheld. Cyberpunk can hit 1080p in quality mode when docked, but maxes out at 810p handheld.

This is far better technology than was available on the Switch 1, where upscaling was very obvious, so you might be fooled for thinking that it's native, but people who've looked at the games closely can still spot it.

@Matt_Barber Yeah, I know they're upscaled, but they still run at 1080p resolution, cos that's exactly what upscaling does: make a game run at a higher resolution than what's rendered. And like you said, the DLSS on the Switch 2 is good enough that you can't really notice the upscaling in games like Outlaws or Cyberpunk when playing in handheld mode.

And obviously with most AAA games like this the docked mode is similarly upscaled, so to me it sounded misleading to say that most Switch 2 games "sacrifice resolution and image quality" in handheld mode, because the 1080p maximum resolution and the small size of the internal Switch 2 screen + the upscaling makes it so that there is no visible sacrifice. If anything, the upscaling is easier to see on a big 4K telly, cos there you can notice the artifacting and other minor details.

@Polvasti Yes, the screen will always be 1080p, so everything will always be 1080p after the upscaling. You'd see a border around it if it wasn't.

To clarify, the trade off is in the resolution at which the game gets rendered internally, and fewer pixels means less data for the upscaling to work with, which is going to impact the image quality. Again, DLSS produces great results, but it's still going to look as though there's been a bit of a softening filter applied versus a game that can do 1080p natively.

You certainly can see evidence of upscaling on your TV too, but if the base resolution is that much higher, you'd have to get quite close to and you're fairly safe from sofa distance. People with very large TVs in small rooms may differ, I suppose.

@OmegaX83

Geekerwan did an analyse of the Switch 2 PCB and main chipset using an electron microscope which gave them the details and timings. Docked was 2.2 Teraflops and portable was up to 1.3 Teraflops which I guess would equate to the Switch 2 when it only gets 2 hours portable gaming performance. Most portable systems downclock as much as possible to conserve battery plus would downclock if over-heating or downclock when the battery is getting to being fully discharged but they can happily run at full speed when docked. Switch 2 in portable mode takes up to 10W per hour with the battery capacity being just under 20Wh. Docked mode is up to about 40W but that includes recharging the Switch 2 console itself. If the console is not being used it takes 3 hours to recharge a Switch 2 from fully discharged so maybe approximately 7W per hour but when used it takes considerably longer so most of that 40W is for running the console in docked mode. Basically it takes 3x or more power to run the Switch 2 in docked mode than portable mode even though portable mode makes much heavier use of the display panel.

The Switch 2 in portable mode probably spends most of its time well below 1 Teraflop for most games. Strangely the CPU is faster in portable mode and this might be down to compensating for less memory bandwidth as the memory chips are clocked slower or maybe because of a more aggressive AI upscale requiring slightly more CPU resources. Switch 2 has quite low CPU resources but no worse than PS4 or Xbox One. However there is some requirement for more CPU resources with DLSS when you have low CPU performance. PCs typically have plenty of CPU resources to spare but Switch 2's CPU's are only clocked at 1-1.1Ghz and 2 are taken by the operating system so you end up in the same area. Virtuos (the developer of soon to release Oblivion) said the Switch 2 is slightly better in CPU resources than the Playstation 4 so sits between PS4 and PS4 Pro in CPU resources however those playstation consoles only take 1 CPU for their operating system. Switch 2 has a passmark CPU score around 2000-2100. For comparison the Steam Deck is at least 9000, the original PS4 around 1500-1700 and the PS4 Pro 2100-2200. The original Switch 600, modded overclocked Mariko Switch model up to 1000-1200. Xbox 360 estimated 1000, PS3 estimates 1200-3000. PS3 estimates are so wide as the cell processor does some things really well but not so good for others. In many tests the PS3 can outperform the PS4 in CPU terms.

Also the Switch 2 screen has a very slow pixel response rate and this is often put down to being a poor cheap panel and not having overclock applied to extend battery runtime. The average pixel response time is 33ms (30th of a second) so really can only generate 30 clean frames per second maximum at best. This creates high input lag. Even the very first Switch console had a panel with a pixel response rate of 20ms which is 50 frames per second. Higher input lag is one of the main differences between playing on Switch 2 in portable mode and docked but I guess that really depends on the TV/monitor you are using.

The original Switch had a GPU that was around 400 Gflops docked for maximum performance and around 200 Gflops for portable but extremely rare to have that level of performance in portable mode. Games ran at between 70 and 400 Gflops so a full difference of about 6x. Maybe Switch 2 is the same so maybe 400-1300 Gflops in portable mode? The 400 Gflops would equate to the simplest Switch 2 games, maybe puzzle games etc.

One last thing is it is very difficult to get a fair level of performance from youtube with regard Switch 2 portable performance as the Switch 2 only gives out a hdmi signal in docked mode so the only way you can see portable performance is by filming the Switch 2 display with a camera which most youtubers don't do. I mainly use my Switch 2 as a portable so this isn't really useful to me to see docked performance all the time. Seek out youtubers who fairly show both portable and docked performance rather than docked only.

I think the interesting part is how much better the upscaling technology makes the difference compared to the original Switch. On a small handheld screen, some of the compromises probably become much harder to notice compared to playing on a big TV.

I mostly wonder how developers will balance this going forward — whether they will prioritize keeping a stable frame rate in handheld mode or push higher visuals when docked.

@reginaldbelvarion The Switch 2 has a very cheap version of DLSS not seen elsewhere with much lower requirements. There is a Digital Foundry video about it. It doesn't upscale the most active part of the screen only the main slow updating section. This makes it far lighter on the system resources and is less easy to see the difference on the portable screen and helps maintain higher frame rates. However I have to say at the time it was used for both docked and portable modes in some games.

Fast Fusion used it on the Switch 2 but it was completely unsuitable for such a fast paced game so they added a native rendering solution to clean up the image.

The DLSS Issue: At launch, Fast Fusion relied heavily on a low base rendering resolution upscaled via a heavily optimized, lower-tier implementation of DLSS to hit high framerates at high speeds. Visual Artifacts: Players noted that the blistering pace of the game caused the AI upscaler to produce smearing, shimmering, and noticeable artifacting on distant tracks. The "Pure" Update: To fix this, developer Shin'en issued a patch introducing a non-upscaled "Pure" graphics mode that lets players turn off DLSS entirely in favor of a native dynamic resolution (1440p docked / 1080p handheld) to provide a cleaner, sharper image edge at the cost of the AI upscale pipeline.

The cheap version of DLSS is only really suitable for slower moving games otherwise there are artifacts everywhere.

It really does seem to be game by game. The dock gives developers more room, but they don’t all spend it the same way. With FF7 I’d be looking at image stability and text clarity more than chasing a neat handheld-versus-docked percentage. The number matters less if the difference disappears at normal viewing distance.

Yeah, I get that, but something like Outlaws which is rendered at 540p but upscaled to 1080p looks way better than say, the Switch 1 version of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, which runs at 540p in handheld mode without any upscaling. That game looks quite soft and blurry.

That's why with games like this I don't think it makes much sense to talk about what the resolution was before the upscaling, because DLSS can make the image quality almost the same as if it was rendered at native 1080p to begin with.

@Polvasti Yes, and no. While you might not to be personally able to tell the difference, there's still a measurable one, and some people are going to pick up on it better than others.

There are also some cases where the upscaling results in worse image quality than the Switch 1 game, e.g. Xenoblade Chronicles X, and more where it doesn't seem to do a whole lot more than what you'd get from just putting 1080p output through your TV, e.g. Animal Crossing. That at least gives you a proper 1080p handheld experience though.

As such, I don't think I'm quite ready to live in the world of Nintendo's marketing department where every game is 1080p handheld and 4K docked, regardless of what's going on under the hood.

Getting back to the original question, it's very implementation dependent, but you're looking at a very small subset of games where there's no lowering of image quality at all for the handheld version. It's just that, at least in the best cases, it's a lot less than you'd expect given the processing power that the Switch 2 has.