Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

Do you think Nintendo Switch 2 might have two screens like the DS?

A friend of mine tricked me with a blurry pic of the ASUS Zenbook Duo 2024, saying it was the Super Nintendo Switch, but ngl the laptop looks like something Nintendo would design. I could definitely see the removable keyb as a controller instead. Not sure if people would want another folding Nintendo console though. I feel like there has to be a new gimmick.

I'd personally love it, but I doubt that's what they're going to do.

@JokerCK not trolling.
Just speculating and adding to the conversation 😊

@JokerCK Not sure how that was trolling, it just seems like a wild take. I feel like everything is called that nowadays.

Personally I just expect Nintendo to avoid more gimmicks and focus on a more powerful console. I'm sure that it will be close in power to the Steamdeck and maybe even a bit more powerful. They are aware that they need a console capable enough of running current third party games so that they don't depend completely on games released by them.

@CharlieZee I have said for years the next Nintendo console will use holograms! I knew it!!

@GrailUK even if the 'papers I found' are fake, I think nintendo WILL do it and be the FIRST to do it as its soooooo them.

So there's some murmuring around the place that we're going to get a reveal in March by the sounds. Even if that happens we'll probably not get confirmation of full details for a while. But even so, going to drop in here now with what I think are generally the safest guesses on what this thing will have followed by what seems likely given rumours and then maybe some wishful thinking on my part

Very safe predictions:

• Still a portable console that you connect to your TV via a dock
• Support for HDMI 2.1 meaning 4K modes and features like HDR and VRR
• At least 256GB of internal storage
• Raw power similar to the Steam Deck and PS4
• Significantly improved load times compared to the Switch
• Faster OS, for example an eShop that loads as fast as the settings menu
• Continued software support for the current Switch hardware well beyond launch

Probable:

• 8" LCD screen, has been rumoured lately and makes some sense
• 1080p screen. If you're going to 8" with more power? Probably not sticking to 720p
• Backwards compatibility. Not set in stone but I'd be surprised if it's not there
• Wireless and USB accessory compatibility. Pro Controllers, GC adaptor etc
• March announcement, late 2024 release

My Hopes:

• Blurring of the lines between what's "Switch" and what's "Switch 2"
• Existing Switch titles to take advantage of the additional hardware via updates
• Analogue triggers (come on Nintendo!)
• NSO expands to GC/Wii and the existing library of titles does not reset
• Physical Accessory compatibility. Dock, JoyCon rails
• OLED screen with HDR and VRR.... a fools hope perhaps....

I hear March 2024 is a date to look for and for PreOrders .... if so get your wallet to bun a hole in it.

@skywake

>Raw power similar to the Steam Deck and PS4

@Fullstack
If you're trying to disprove my point that it's "similar to PS4/Steam Deck" then you're going to need a log scale on that graph. Because I would argue that the Wii U, 360, PS3 and Switch are all broadly "similar" despite there being about a 3-8x gap between them in one spec or another and over a decade of architectural improvements. Because fundamentally they run more or less the same kinds of games at more or less the same fidelity. And in that same sense I think it's fair to say that this Switch 2 thing will be "similar" to XBOne, Steam Deck, PS4, PS4 Pro

As I understand it realistically we're talking ~3TFLOPS of raw raster performance docked, less in portable mode. Although in both cases is a guess because we have no idea how they're going to clock it. But in any case, that level of power lands it a tad under PS4 Pro docked and probably a tad over Steam Deck in portable mode. Machine learning certainly would allow it to punch above its weight but it ain't magic. Beyond the SoC itself realistically we're talking maybe 12GB RAM and ~100GB/s memory bandwidth. PS4 was 8GB and 176GB/s, Steam Deck is 16GB and 88GB/s, PS4 Pro was 8GB and 217GB/s. Again, right down the middle. Storage performance it'll probably take some names but even there it's not going to be rivalling PS5 or XBox Series

So yes, broadly it'll be similar to PS4

@skywake If that's your personal litmus that's fine, but you need to stay consistent and throw ps4 xbone and steamdeck in with ps360 and switch too.

8x a switch (393 Gflops) is over 3 Tflops, ps4 was only 1.8 tflops.

Also, that comparison was peak theoretical, there is no point bringing In things like gcn Era bandwidth as bandwidth usage today is worlds apart from back then. 100 GB/s a second on rdna/cuda 8+ runs circles around 200 GB/s from gcn Era hardware (ps4 needed 98 GB/s per Tflop to keep fed, ampere averages around 30-40), which itself ran circles around terascale bandwidth usage. And then there's cpu bottlenecking on the gcn machines ooh boy......

If we start getting into how close to peak theoretical these systems can actually get, ps3/360/wii u/ps4/xbone are going to plummet like a rock compared to maxwell/rdna/ampere arches. (Well rdna up to rdna2, rdna 3 is currently early terascale levels of busted, only getting half its marketed peak theoretical for games, cause dual issue isn't working well with most game code).

Ps5 was not a part of the comparison, but it's easy enough to put it in a gpu comparison calculator:

So does anyone have reliable info if GameStop is even doing Preorder if the March Direct comes?

March would be neato for a reveal I suppose because that means an even sooner release. My switch is mostly used in portable mode and the cheap screen is riddled in scratch marks. It would be nice to have a new console that supports the switch’s library because my switch is in bad shape

And if those so called leaks mean anything at all, then going by previously known reports, there is a high chance this thing will be BC

@SwitchForce

I certainly don't, I doubt even gamestop employees up to store and maybe regional managers do either.

@Fullstack
Two things. Firstly the specs where there's an 8x gap between Wii U, 360, PS3 and Switch was the amount of RAM. That gap is an outlier but even it is within an order of magnitude. Most of the specs are well, especially the core ones, are within an order of magnitude of each other. Something which isn't really true of Switch vs PS4

And again, log scale, with some context around it. Because what we care about here is the order of magnitude difference. An extra 10 GFLOP for the PS5 means nothing but it would've been very significant for the Wii. And what we care about is how those gaps sit alongside other devices so we can get a bit of an idea of broadly which "group" of devices it sits alongside. So log scale.

When I grab a list of the "GFLOPS" for every console going back to the Dreamcast and take your 2.9TFLOPs Switch 2 estimate entirely at face value.....

It's a portable PS4/XBOne in the same way that the Switch was a portable PS3/360/WiiU. So yes, raw power similar to the PS4/Steam Deck. Especially if we allow some space here for portable mode to potentially have a fairly aggressive underclock

edit: also, RAM just for fun. Especially since I inadvertently mentioned it earlier and you ran with it

And sure, when you look at that spec? Fair to say the Switch is closer to the PS4 than it is to the 360 or PS3. But total system memory is increasingly becoming more a game of throwing as much as you want in there. Well, unless your NVidia and want to gimp some SKUs in a deliberate effort to push consumers up the product stack. So yeah, RAM capacity is a funny one. Kinda like storage a bit I guess. There's this exponential growth in what they could throw in there but a bit more of a linear growth in how much is actually needed

@skywake Linear would much better represent your order of magnitude point. I see you said you were specifically talking about ram, so I was at the wrong tree with performance.

I dont see switch as a portable 360/PS3 though. Like it's not even close. Switch can get dang near A Tflop of asynchronous fp16 compute, and ps360/wii u don't even have support for mixed precision, enabling ports of games that do things as basic fundamental mechanics ps360/wii u couldn't even dream of, even if they had as much ram as switch.

Monte blanc was going to be a portable 360/ps3/wii u

Switch was a portable gtx 900.

Just some extra info since it's so hard to eyeball, switch 2 is 1536 cuda cores, so downclocked from an ampere standard of 1.6 or 1.7 to a conservative 1 ghz docked, that would be 3.072 Tflops dense fp32, and 3.072 tflops dense fp16.

@Fullstack
You're going WAY to deep in what was a throw away line. And no, a linear scale doesn't make it clearer. You need context and for context you need comparison. Even if you do academically understand that 1TFLOP is a million, million floating point calculations per second I mean... what even is that? Completely meaningless if there's not a comparison. And that comparison has to be on a log scale. A linear scale just makes the more recent jumps looks bigger, it hides the context

Like if I made an optimisation to a bit of code that shaved 10s off is that significant? I mean maybe, it depends. How long did it take before? The longer it took before the less significant a 10s improvement is. If you shaved 10s off something that used to take 10s that means a lot more than if you shave 10s off something that took 1min or an hour. So you need that context and in order to make sense of it it needs to be on a log scale

Which is why I say we'll be largely around the PS4/Steam Deck spec. Because those are big neon signposts that people broadly understand and are the closest we have as consumer devices to where this will land

Also, side note, 1Ghz isn't necessarily conservative, especially undocked. Maxwell GPUs were usually clocked at around 1-1.1Ghz and yet the Switch runs at 768Mhz docked and 307Mhz in portable mode. If I was to take your numbers literally as they are and scale them in the same way? It'd be 1.2Ghz docked and 500Mhz in portable mode. And note, it's a portable device so the portable clock will need to be the target. So take your number and potentially halve it for portable play, you land at .... 1.5TFLOPS....

It's basically a portable PS4 with some more modern tricks. It's also basically what the Steam Deck is also and, frankly, on a portable device that's great. Of course, it's not exactly that, it's going to have some tricks up its sleeve and I'm sure you'd love to continue to get into the weeds of what that is and yada, yada, yada. But broadly, powerful enough for large, modern open world games that consistently hit 1080p/60fps but not enough power that you're seriously bothering with 4K or Ray Tracing? Sounds good to me...

... and also sounds basically like a portable PS4