Nintendo’s Next-Gen Switch 2 Console Specs Leak Out, Could Be Powered By NVIDIA Ampere GPU With Ray Tracing & DLSS 2.2 Support
Yesterday’s NVIDIA leak was undoubtedly a major one, revealing several crucial and confidential information of existing and upcoming products. One of the leaks seemingly featured the source code for NVIDIA’s DLSS technology but users were quick to spot ‘NVN2’ mentioned in the source files which is allegedly the graphics API for the next-generation Switch 2 or Switch Pro consoles.
— Nikki™ 🌹 (@NWPlayer123) March 1, 2022 Digging through the leaked files, several users were able to spot that the NVN2 API is designed to work with NVIDIA’s Ampere GPU architecture and will feature support for both Ray Tracing & the aforementioned DLSS (2.2) technology. Now what’s more interesting is that there are references to the T234/T239 SOCs which according to Kopite7kimi were going to power the new Nintendo Switch 2 console. Do note that there have already been reports of a DLSS powered Switch console in the works prior to this leak. These SOCs will be a custom Orin design and will have a codename starting with a ‘D’. The two possible codenames for the SOC are either Dane or Drake though some believe that these SOCs and the codenames were only specific to the Switch Pro which has been canceled in favor of a truly next-gen Switch console. The T234 SOC is suggested to feature 2048 Ampere GPU CUDA Cores and 12x ARM Cortex-A78AE (Hercules) 64-bit cores. The T239 which will be custom-designed based on this is suggested to offer slightly different specifications. The specific GPU that the SOC will be using seems to be the Ampere GA10F and it is rumored to feature the chip is said (or rumored) to feature the same SEC8N rate as ORIN, 1024 FP32 rate, or half of Orin. The SOC will also likely carry AV1 support.
— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) March 2, 2022 While the leak does report these specifications to be true, we can’t say with certainty that these will be the final specs used for the next-gen Nintendo Switch 2 console. It could be entirely possible that these specs are specific to an unreleased or canceled version of the console and a new variant with far better specs could be in the works. So in the end, it’s best we wait for final announcement or confirmation from Nintendo itself.
