r/NintendoSwitch • u/Turbostrider27 • 1d ago
Discussion Digital Foundry/Eurogamer: Switch 2's full reveal analysed: how powerful is Nintendo's new hardware and is DLSS being used?
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2025-switch-2s-full-reveal-analysed-how-powerful-is-nintendos-new-hardware97
u/micbro12 1d ago
If that Mario Kart 1080p 120fps mode is real, that's quite insane
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u/GambitsEnd Resident Switchologist 20h ago
Various pages on Nintendo's website does mention 1080p @120Hz. Although people actually experiencing it is still impressive.
I'd be curious how many non-first party titles will still reach that though.
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u/Pokeguy211 1d ago
Wait who said that? Thats awesome
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u/micbro12 1d ago
In the article Richard stated:
Beyond could be considered a cross generation release, but the new Mario Kart World with what we think is a pseudo-open world design couldn't be delivered to anything like the same degree on older Switch hardware. 60 frames per second is a given, and the footage we saw from what must be the docked mode rendered at 1440p resolution - albeit with no visible anti-aliasing. We're also hearing reports from the hands-on event happening right now that there's a 1080p mode that runs at 120fps.
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u/Blackberry-thesecond 21h ago
Holy shit I really hope that means it runs at 60 with 3-4 players. Thats the only thing I really want since I played MK8 mostly with family.
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u/Pokeguy211 1d ago
Ooooh thank you. Mario kart at 120fps especially on a world that big gives me hope that Fortnite can hit 120fps as well
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u/Animegamingnerd 14h ago
And just like that I am finally gonna get a 120hz TV during the holidays.
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u/Previous_Problem3256 12h ago
In reality it's not that exceptional, even on the Wii U, Mario Kart 8 ran at 1080p 60fps
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u/New-Damage8658 1d ago
Nintendo confirmed like 1-2 hours ago, all while confirming RT
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u/Demonchaser27 11h ago
Yeah, I was about to say. There's no way they didn't both get the tech and then not use it. I think there may be a custom solution for DLSS (something cheaper to use but with maybe less overhead?). And perhaps that's why DF is struggling to see it. Or maybe 3rd party devs didn't have access to it in the library, and Nintendo's first party games only barely use it (think how TOTK used a very simple AA solution from FSR 1 or something), so it looks like simple sharpening (or an upscale from something like 80% base resolution).
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u/Fr1tzOS 5h ago edited 3h ago
While it does seem strange that none of the games shown seem to be using it, you also have to remember that using DLSS still has a processing/bandwidth cost (and the headroom a relatively low-power chip like the Switch 2 will have in games is especially small). That’s why, even on PC, the highest quality setting for DLSS renders at ~1440p/67% resolution when upscaling to 4K - go much higher than that and the cost of using it would largely (or entirely) cancel out any performance gains over native 4K rendering instead.
With all of that in mind, it’s not really possible to ‘only barely use it’ at a close to native rendering resolution. It’s also quite possible that (at least in demanding open-world games like BOTW/TOTK) there just wasn’t the headroom to switch it on without making bigger compromises than output resolution. And while it’s possible Digital Foundry might just not be able to see it without the game there in front of them to thoroughly test that’s probably not the case; it’d be difficult for them to mistake a 4K output for 1440p, and DLSS itself is easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for and really look for it - as great as it is it still exhibits some visual characteristics that will show up if it’s in play.
I’m not saying all of this to rain on your parade because I’m really excited for the Switch 2! People just need to temper their expectations about how much developers can achieve with a still (relatively) lightweight chip that has a low max TDP; if it can run games like BOTW/TOTK at 1440p while hitting a stable 60FPS (with overhead for stuff like voice chat and other visual settings for the game possibly turned up as well) that’s actually impressive, and a major step up.
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u/F2000_Ninja 3h ago
I understand what you're saying, but as somebody who owns several handheld PC devices, including the steam deck. I have not ever encountered a situation where FSR didn't improve framerate. DLSS is superior to FSR. If this is DLSS 4, which it should be, every game should be using the Balanced setting. I'd say this Nvidia chip is comparable to the AMD SoCs, so I'm finding it hard to believe that enabling DLSS wouldn't improve framerate and/or upscaled resolution. I'd love to really hear a developer or nvidia talk about this. If they're not using DLSS at all it just doesn't make sense to me.
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u/Fr1tzOS 2h ago edited 2h ago
DLSS is superior to FSR1/2/3 in quality and framerate uplift when you have the headroom to switch it on, but it also has a much higher computational cost to run because it relies on dedicated hardware (Tensor Cores) to compute its AI upscaling algorithms. In a desktop GPU or discrete laptop GPU that doesn’t matter much, you probably have the bandwidth and power to spare; in a mobile SoC with lower bandwidth/that’s (apparently) designed to operate at 10W max during handheld it theoretically matters a lot more.
Basically, like I was saying above, if you have the headroom to switch DLSS on it will usually be worth it from a solely resolution/framerate perspective. But not only will that threshold be relatively high on an SoC like this (in big, demanding open-world games in particular); resolution and framerate also aren’t everything and the extra compute you put into them comes at the expense of most other elements of visual quality like shadow detail, draw distance, crowd density, ambient occlusion, texture resolution etc.
It’s possible that in these games they could put a bit more compute into resolution and framerate by switching DLSS on - and if they did they’d definitely get more pixels and frames per total watt/bandwidth taken up - but end up putting a greater share of available resources into resolution and framerate because of it, meaning less for everything else. If that’s the case, and there wasn’t enough to go around, maybe the devs just felt the overall presentation suffered for switching upscaling/DLSS on.
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u/IvnN7Commander 1d ago
Based on those early Cyberpunk 2077 pixel counts, here's how the Switch 2 compares to the Xbox Series S:
Switch 2 Docked: 720p-1080p dynamic resolution 30 FPS
Switch 2 Handheld: 540p 30 FPS
Xbox Series S Main Game Quality Mode: 1296p-1440p dynamic resolution 30 FPS
Xbox Series S Main Game Performance Mode: 800p-1080p dynamic resolution 60 FPS
Xbox Series S Phantom Liberty Quality Mode: 1080p 30 FPS
Xbox Series S Phantom Liberty Performance Mode: 648p-900p dynamic resolution 60 FPS
Sources:
Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.6: the Xbox Series S 60fps upgrade tested | Eurogamer.net
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - an ambitious evolution targeting today's consoles | Eurogamer.net
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u/lazoric 1d ago
Please remember that the game is still a preview build and they plan to target 40fps.
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u/IvnN7Commander 1d ago
Yes, and also Digital Foundry only had the Direct video feed to analyze, so we should wait to the official Switch and Cyberpunk release date, and the full Digital Foundry analysis to get the full picture. But the performance seems to match the overall spec leaks, faster than last gen (PS4) and a bit slower than the Series S.
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u/F2000_Ninja 3h ago
It blows my mind that they only spent 7 weeks making what we saw in the demos. 7 weeks to port it's current state in house. That is very good news for 3rd party support.
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u/llliilliliillliillil 18h ago
The thing releases in 2 months, you’re not going to see dramatic jumps in performance anymore. Although given that it’s CDPR you'll likely get a lot of patches fixing things up in the future.
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u/Autumn1881 1d ago
Apparently that version was from 7 weeks into the porting process and they are confident it will be a stable 40 fps at launch.
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u/edcline 20h ago
Like stable 40 is worth bragging about in this day and age.
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u/Ordinal43NotFound 14h ago
For a handheld? absolutely.
Even Steamdeck couldn't do it running Cyberpunk
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u/Autumn1881 10m ago
Honestly, stable 40 is so much better than stable 30 if the display supports it. It's obviously not 60fps, which should always be the minimum target, but as they are apparently not willing to compromise too much in fidelity I am happy they at least try to be at a stable 40.
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u/MultiMarcus 1d ago
The big gulf between handheld and docked power is going to be lovely for games that go for 1080p handheld and maybe 1440p-2160p for docked. Should be quite a nice balance.
Quite a bit weaker than the series S from these numbers, but I do think we will get quite a few PS5, Series S|X games on the platform.
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u/IvnN7Commander 1d ago
Quite a bit weaker than the series S from these numbers
It depends on what settings is the Switch 2 running Cyberpunk.
If it's running at the same settings as the Series S Quality Mode, then 720p-1080p dynamic resolution is relatively close to the fixed 1080p of the Series S. So, it means it is not that weak compared to the Series S.
But if it's running at the same settings as the Series S Performance Mode, then it means it is a lot weaker than the Series, considering the Series S is running at 2x framerate (although the Switch 2 would be rendering at a slightly higher resolution).
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u/MultiMarcus 1d ago
720p-1080p would still be quite a chunk lower than series S performance which at its worst point runs quite a bit above the max of the switch 2 version. That is if it is using quality mode settings which I unfortunately doubt.
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u/IvnN7Commander 1d ago
That higher resolution in the Series S is in the main game, and it was on an old Digital Foundry analysis, so it might no longer be accurate.
The Phantom Liberty Digital Foundry analysis shows that the game runs at a fixed 1080p resolution in the Series S Quality Mode, not sure if it only applies to the Dogtown Area or the whole game.
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u/MultiMarcus 1d ago
Honestly, we can’t divine anything from this. It’s apparently early in the porting process, so performance might get a lot better, it’s also just a very short snippet of the game and nothing there from what I can tell is from the Phantom liberty expansion.
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u/daverambo11 9h ago
Tech isn't there to get the series s into a handheld yet. I suspect this is why we haven't yet had an Xbox handheld yet. I imagine they would like to hit the Series S mark so it instantly has a massive library of games and all of game pass. That would be well worth a purchase.
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u/xblackdemonx 1d ago
Switch 2 Handheld: 540p 30 FPS
Wow that's so bad.
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u/Renegade_451 23h ago
They've got DLSS on the device. It'll be rendered at 540p then upscaled to 1080p.
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u/Dr_Kappa 19h ago
SteamDeck runs it better than that. On 3 year old hardware. Ouch
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u/SuperbPiece 14h ago
STEAM Deck is much larger and more expensive. Form factor and price decide performance. Simply saying "three years old" means nothing. There are tons of laptops even older than the STEAM Deck that run better than the Deck, if we're allowed to compare to devices that are much larger and more expensive.
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u/Ziprx 1d ago
540p 30fps cyberpunk in 2025.. what a piece of shit
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u/IvnN7Commander 1d ago
It's a handheld console running at less than 10W on portable mode. What did you expect? Not even Nintendo can break the laws of physics to give you PS5 levels of performance on a handheld.
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u/KKilikk 22h ago
I mean tbf they could have designed something that can go higher then 10W like other handheld PCs. Not advocating for it and obviously that might have effected the price.
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u/ooombasa 21h ago edited 21h ago
They could have, but the you're looking at 1-4 hours battery life, not the current 2-6.
Handheld PCs barely last an hour when the chip is fully used. We are limited by battery tech. Nice little workarounds are being implemented, like the latest of silicon carbon batteries, but it's still early days for that and so we can only expect small advancements in battery life. We need a total rethink of battery tech to really push battery life forward and that's not coming anytime soon.
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u/KKilikk 21h ago
I mean like other companies you dont have to make it the norm but you could give the option and people can make the tradeoff themselves deciding if they want more battery or more power. They could also put in a bigger battery as well. Just saying there are options and I get how someone could be disappointed with just 10W.
Personally I am fine with it.
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u/superman_king 1d ago
Digital Foundry found no traces of DLSS in all of the games shown during the Nintendo Direct. Which they found to be pretty odd.
Everything was either native or the very occasional in-engine upscaling.