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Comment by NVIDIA employee confirms existence of Tegra239 - the SoC likely to be used on the Nintendo Switch 2

Atheerios

Atheerios

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,099
From Reddit:

An NVIDIA employee has confirmed the existence of the Tegra239 chip which has been rumoured since 2021 as being developed for the next-generation Nintendo Switch. His comment which can be accessed at linux.org and states:
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Adding support for Tegra239 SoC which has eight cores in a single cluster. Also, moving num_clusters to soc data to avoid over allocating memory for four clusters always.
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This incident further corroborates reliable NVIDIA leaker kopite7kimi's assertion that NVIDIA will use a modified version of its T234 Orin chip for the next-generation Switch.

As of this leak, we now know the following details about the next Nintendo Switch console:

  • T239 SoC (info from above leak)
    • 8-core CPU - likely to be ARM Cortex A78C/A78 (inferred from above leak)
  • Ampere-based GPU that may incorporate some Lovelace features (source)
  • The 2nd generation Nintendo Switch graphics API contains references to DLSS 2.2 and raytracing support (source)
 
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IDontBeatGames

IDontBeatGames

ThreadMarksman
Member
Oct 29, 2017
16,544
New York
And just like that, you can hear the rumblings of every Era poster getting ready to theorize about how the Switch Pro or Switch 2 is coming next year
reset-the-clock-pacific-rim.gif
 
DubleDuce

DubleDuce

Member
Jan 15, 2018
568
For those of us...less tech savy individuals...what would be the nearest console comparison to these specs?

Or is there not enough known to make a comparison?
 
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
for those looking to catch up on Drake info, we know
  • 8-core cpu, most likely the A78C
  • 1536 core ampere gpu
  • 128-bit memory bus
  • DLSS and Ray Tracing supported
we can pretty accurately guess where the system is gonna lie at this point.

DubleDuce said:
For those of us...less tech savy individuals...what would be the nearest console comparison to these specs?

Or is there not enough known to make a comparison?
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if you used switch clocks, PS4 in handheld. or thereabouts
 
Kyzer

Kyzer

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,709
ILikeFeet said:
for those looking to catch up on Drake info, we know
  • 8-core cpu, most likely the A78C
  • 1536 core ampere gpu
  • 128-bit memory bus
  • DLSS and Ray Tracing supported
we can pretty accurately guess where the system is gonna lie at this point.


if you used switch clocks, PS4 in handheld. or thereabouts
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PS4 with DLSS 2.2 and RT sounds pretty good to me
 
JJD

JJD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,506
The PS5 GPU is supposed to be on par with a 2070 no?

If switch is based on Ampere it will be the first time a Nintendo console has more modern tech than MS and Sony?
 
ArchedThunder

ArchedThunder

Uncle Beerus
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,067
ILikeFeet said:
for those looking to catch up on Drake info, we know
  • 8-core cpu, most likely the A78C
  • 1536 core ampere gpu
  • 128-bit memory bus
  • DLSS and Ray Tracing supported
we can pretty accurately guess where the system is gonna lie at this point.


if you used switch clocks, PS4 in handheld. or thereabouts
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Yeah, this thing is going to be a little beast, but despite that people do need to understand that this isn't going to be as powerful as a Series S, though it has some tricks up it's sleeve that Series S doesn't have.
Ports are going to be so interesting, we could be seeing games with lower graphical quality than Series S, but better image quality thanks to DLSS.
Madao said:
are these chips still "cutting edge" or are they already old?
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The GPU is definitely cutting edge as far as mobile goes and the CPU is basically the best possible option they could have gone with.
 
Dolce

Dolce

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,252
Sullivan said:
I'm curious what this means then:


Feel like if there's any feature they should absolutely be trying to get onto Switch 2 would be DLSS 3.
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Isn't DLSS3 limited only to 4xxx GPUs? Does that not indicate it's because of hardware?

JJD said:
If the series x and PS5 are similar to a Turing 2070 feature wise wouldn't a SOC based on ampere be more modern?
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In terms of featureset, though the architecture the PS5 and Series were based on debuted with those consoles IIRC.
 
poptire

poptire

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
9,981
As a complete tech novice, what's the difference between DLSS 2.2 and 3? Would it be missing some key features without the latest version?
 
RingoGaSuki

RingoGaSuki

Member
Apr 22, 2019
2,441
JJD said:
The PS5 GPU is supposed to be on par with a 2070 no?

If switch is based on Ampere it will be the first time a Nintendo console has more modern tech than MS and Sony?
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Gamecube was more powerful than Dreamcast, PS2 or Xbox, and the N64 was more powerful than the Saturn or the PS1, it would be the first time since Gen 6 though.
 
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
Madao said:
are these chips still "cutting edge" or are they already old?
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being cutting edge isn't that important architecturally. if you're limited on power, then you need to shell out for a cutting edge node to overcome that

Sullivan said:
I'm curious what this means then:


Feel like if there's any feature they should absolutely be trying to get onto Switch 2 would be DLSS 3.
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Orin's lovelace features aren't that gaming relevant. Drake is pretty much desktop Ampere in design

poptire said:
As a complete tech novice, what's the difference between DLSS 2.2 and 3? Would it be missing some key features without the latest version?
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the only difference is the frame generation. (the bottom 4 parts here)

how-nvidia-dlss-3-works.jpg
 
Neutron

Neutron

Member
Jun 2, 2022
2,774
Does using a "sequel" chip (very technical language I'm using here) allow for easy backward compatibility?

I want nothing more than for Nintendo to start facilitating a persistent library as all other vendors do.
 
Dolce

Dolce

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,252
RingoGaSuki said:
Gamecube was more powerful than Dreamcast, PS2 or Xbox, and the N64 was more powerful than the Saturn or the PS1, it would be the first time since Gen 6 though.
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Worth mentioning that as powerful as the N64 was, it was also a 360 vs PS3 situation. The PS1 and its developmental tools were much easier to use.
 
Maple

Maple

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,732
Kyzer said:
PS4 with DLSS 2.2 and RT sounds pretty good to me
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Strictly speaking in terms of the GPU, a PS4 with DLSS 2.2 and RT on a more modern architecture is a good comparison. DLSS specifically will allow the Switch 2 to punch above the weight of the PS4.

On the CPU side of things, though, the A78 cores in the Switch 2 absolutely run circles around the Jaguar CPU cores in the PS4.

So between the Ampere based GPU architecture, DLSS, RT cores, and the A78 CPU cores.....I would see the Switch 2 is definitely a more capable machine than the PS4.

What I'm wondering is how much of Ada Lovelace will show up in the architecture of the Switch 2's GPU. Will it be 100% Ampere, or will there a few features from Lovelace baked into the design? kopite originally speculated (?) that the GPU architecture of Drake was based on Lovelace.
 
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