Switch 2 Speculation

Seanspeed said:
There would be no reason to go with SD Express in that case.

That's kind of the point I had been bringing up for a long time - if Switch was going to continue to use standard SD cards, it would either mean forcing mandatory installs onto the faster internal/embedded storage and without any good storage upgrade potential, OR, they'd simply have to give up trying to chase 3rd party games with stronger I/O demands that the new gen consoles have opened up.

For me, both these options would be massive problems for Nintendo. Hence why I guessed that SD Express could well be the answer quite a while back. Alleviates all these issues in one stroke, along with ensuring no fuss backwards compatibility for physical and digital with just the one SD slot. And it helps Nintendo save on needing to include lots of internal storage as stock while helping consumers need less expanded storage. It'll also hopefully mean many games, like with Switch 1, are very playable Day 1 even without an internet connection.

The other option could have been to go with something like an internal 2230 NVMe drive like Steam Deck, while having the SD slot for BC and to slot Switch 2 games in for mandatory installation. Thing is, storage expansion is then an issue, cuz Nintendo is not the sort of company that would want you opening up the system to upgrade it, and I'm not sure there'd be any elegant way to offer an external expansion port in a smaller portable device like this.
Click to expand...
Nevermind, didn't read the response well enough.
 
Charlietus said:
The storage for the cartridges wouldn't need to be fast if you needed install games on the storage or the SD express. It's not like blu rays are fast at all, they just get used as storage.
Click to expand...

That's a crap user experience for Nintendo customers. I don't think they'd go for installs from carts. Which leaves some sort of higher bandwidth cart, however it's done.

I'd forgotten about his artcile from April where they said that Ninendo are using Samsung 5th Gen V-NAND for internal memory and game cartridges. Samsung are the 9th generation V-NAND, so it's an older process.

The article might just be wrong.

www.businesskorea.co.kr

New Nintendo Device after Eight Years: Mainly Built with Samsung Components

The upcoming Nintendo Switch 2, the first new gaming device from Japan’s Nintendo in eight years, is expected to incorporate a significant amount of technology
www.businesskorea.co.kr www.businesskorea.co.kr
 
cheapchips said:
That's a crap user experience for Nintendo customers. I don't think they'd go for installs from carts. Which leaves some sort of higher bandwidth cart, however it's done.

I'd forgotten about his artcile from April where they said that Ninendo are using Samsung 5th Gen V-NAND for internal memory and game cartridges. Samsung are the 9th generation V-NAND, so it's an older process.

The article might just be wrong.

www.businesskorea.co.kr

New Nintendo Device after Eight Years: Mainly Built with Samsung Components

The upcoming Nintendo Switch 2, the first new gaming device from Japan’s Nintendo in eight years, is expected to incorporate a significant amount of technology
www.businesskorea.co.kr www.businesskorea.co.kr
Click to expand...
It's not that bad on other consoles honestly. Higher cost storage medium means higher prices for games, so I'd accept to wait 5 minutes for games installs.
 
Charlietus said:
It's not that bad on other consoles honestly. Higher cost storage medium means higher prices for games, so I'd accept to wait 5 minutes for games installs.
Click to expand...

It was more a comment on what I feel Nintendo consider an acceptable user experience. I don't think installs from carts and managing internal/external storage that comes with that is very Nintendo at all.
 
cheapchips said:
It was more a comment on what I feel Nintendo consider an acceptable user experience. I don't think installs from carts and managing internal/external storage that comes with that is very Nintendo at all.
Click to expand...
Streaming speed for developers, BC with old SD Cards, cheaper game cards. Out of all the options mandatory installs fixes all issues at the expense of user experience.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Except cost. ;) What would a high speed game card cost to make versus a slow one you can copy to fast 'internal' storage?

What are the options for ROM carts?
Click to expand...
NAND flash chips like high capacity Switch cards. the limit would be the interface which connects the reader to the SoC.
 
I see a lot of doubt that the switch 2 will be able to play PS5 games, but if we look a the original switch vs the PS4, things look a lot better comparably.

The switch had 236 gigaflops in portable mode and 393 gigaflops in docked mode, against 1.8 terflops for the PS4 (4,5x the power if we look at docked performance)

It had 4gb of ram at 25,6gb/s vs PS4's 8gb at 176gb/s (twice the ram capacity and 7 times the bandwidth)

Low amounts of storage.

If we look at switch 2 estimates, things look a lot better.

Let's estimate 2 terflops in docked mode, that's 5 times less than the PS5, but with the DLSS advantage and better ray tracing hardware.

Then we have the ram, and switch 2 has 12gb, just 4gb less than the PS5. It also has around 120gb/s of memory bandwidth, less than 4 times than the PS5.

And then the storage, 256gb on board, enough for most AAA games.

When we get the device on our hands and 99% of the third parties announce support, I am not going to be surprised.
 
Charlietus said:
I see a lot of doubt that the switch 2 will be able to play PS5 games, but if we look a the original switch vs the PS4, things look a lot better comparably.

The switch had 236 gigaflops in portable mode and 393 gigaflops in docked mode, against 1.8 terflops for the PS4 (4,5x the power if we look at docked performance)

It had 4gb of ram at 25,6gb/s vs PS4's 8gb at 176gb/s (twice the ram capacity and 7 times the bandwidth)

Low amounts of storage.

If we look at switch 2 estimates, things look a lot better.

Let's estimate 2 terflops in docked mode, that's 5 times less than the PS5, but with the DLSS advantage and better ray tracing hardware.

Then we have the ram, and switch 2 has 12gb, just 4gb less than the PS5. It also has around 120gb/s of memory bandwidth, less than 4 times than the PS5.

And then the storage, 256gb on board, enough for most AAA games.

When we get the device on our hands and 99% of the third parties announce support, I am not going to be surprised.
Click to expand...
Switch 2 will have half the bandwidth of even the PS4 although newer architecture.

I would expect Switch 2 games to be half the framerate and half the resolution of Series S games.. Some Series S games are already below 1080p.

So if a game is 1080p 60fps on Series S. I would expect it to be 30fps and around 360p to 540p handheld upscaled to 1080p and Docked should be 30fps at 720p to 900p upscaled to 1440p.

The only caveat is if a game uses heavy raytracing I expect Switch 2 to stack up a bit better as current gen consoles have really piss poor raytracing performance. So Switch 2 may be able to match framerate or resolution of Series S in heavy raytraced games.
 
Charlietus said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1i1fzgg/switch_2_gpu_in_docked_mode_appears_to_run_at

Docked 1007 MHz (3 TF~)

Portable 561 MHz (1,7TF~)

If this is true, that's better than I expected.

Edit: unless we have to halve everything here due to ampere flops... If so that's a little bit worse than what I hoped.
Click to expand...

You think it's really possible for the CPU clocks to be sooooooo low?
Those CPU use so little energy even at 2GHz, I can't understand why would anyone fix it at 1GHz, seems like a complete waste of transistors.
 
Panino Manino said:
You think it's really possible for the CPU clocks to be sooooooo low?
Those CPU use so little energy even at 2GHz, I can't understand why would anyone fix it at 1GHz, seems like a complete waste of transistors.
Click to expand...
Those numbers are realistic because they are disappointing in some ways. Let's remember that this is Nintendo.
 
Charlietus said:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1i1fzgg/switch_2_gpu_in_docked_mode_appears_to_run_at

Docked 1007 MHz (3 TF~)

Portable 561 MHz (1,7TF~)

If this is true, that's better than I expected.

Edit: unless we have to halve everything here due to ampere flops... If so that's a little bit worse than what I hoped.
Click to expand...

You hadn't even considered the other area to bring disappointment. Memory bandwidth in handheld and even docked mode leave a lot to be desired in a performant game console.
 
Handheld: CPU 1100.8 MHz, GPU 561 MHz, EMC 2133 MHz
Docked: CPU 998.4 MHz, GPU 1007.25 MHz, EMC 3200 MHz

Apparently this is the complete spec. The CPU frequency doesn't make much sense to me, makes me doubt if there isn't some mistake somewhere.
 
Apologies if I am missing something (very likely) - it appeared to me that memory bandwidth seemed appropriate for these reported specifications and clocks? *Note: I am old enough to remember the GF256 SDR and TNT2 M64, which maybe shapes my expectations.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
Switch The Alternative SoC History
Replies
14
Views
2K
Panino Manino
P
D
Game Economics, Graphics and AI ...
Replies
2
Views
489
arandomguy
A
B
  • Poll
Do you see another game other than GTA VI winning 2025 GOTY at TGA?
Replies
9
Views
1K
Seanspeed
S
G
Tech Differences between Switch and 7th Gen (PS3/360) Games
2
Replies
21
Views
9K
GuardHei
G
Shifty Geezer
Proposed structure change to Console forum
Replies
11
Views
1K
Malo
Malo
Back
Top