As someone who followed Switch 2 rumors going all the way back to 2021, its been a wild ride with performance approximations being made based on leaked specs for the T239 SOC that powers Switch 2.  We learned early on that T239 would have 1536 Ampere GPU cores with eight Arm CPU cores with a 128 bit memory bus.  This was a significant boost over the Tegra X1 SOC that powers the Switch with its 256 GPU cores, four ARM CPU cores and a 64 bit memory bus.  Even with plenty of missing pieces to the puzzle, it was easy to see that this would be a substantial improvement in performance over the Switch.  What became the hot topic for debate was how would this machine stack up to other consoles on the market.  Would it be shoulder to shoulder with the PS4 or Series S?  Some overly optimistic opinions even suggested a possibility that Switch 2 would surpass the Series S and compete with the PS5 and Series X thanks to DLSS being the magic bullet.  On June 5th 2025, Switch 2 finally released and the console could speak for itself. 

The missing pieces of the puzzle did eventually come into view through software development material being leaked shortly before Switch 2’s launch date.  The GPU is clocked at 561Mhz in portable mode, delivering a theoretical 1.7 Tflops of shader performance.  In docked mode, the clock speed increased to 1Ghz, delivering a theoretical 3.1 Tflops of shader performance.  As was the case with measuring performance by bits in the early days of consoles, comparing flops performance between different GPU’s is not a one to one comparison, but should be treated as a ball park approximation for performance.  The CPU turned out to be the ARM A78C variant with eight total cores clocked at 1Ghz.  On paper, this could be raise some of eyebrows as it offers double the CPU cores as the Tegra X1, but running at the same low 1Ghz clock speeds as the A57 CPU cores in the Tegra X1.  The performance is not simply a 2x thanks to twice as many cores, but thanks to the increased IPC (instructions per clock), each A78C is roughly twice as performant as the A57 CPU cores.  Resulting in roughly a 4x increase in CPU performance over the original Switch.  Thanks to the much faster 12 GB of LPDDR5X memory coupled to a larger 128bit memory bus compared to the 64 bit memory bus on the Tegra X1, memory bandwidth limitations are far less severe.  

DLSS, a well established and respected upscaling technology developed by Nvidia created a lot of buzz for Switch 2 leading up to its full reveal.  Would DLSS be the magic bullet that has Switch 2 games running in 4K?  The short answer is no.  The rendering cost of DLSS is real and this wasn’t something that was well understood early on.  Digital Foundry put out a video detailing just how demanding DLSS can be for a low spec Ampere based GPU all the way back in November of 2023.  Reality quickly set in, DLSS would not offer a free lunch and using DLSS to scale all the way to 4K seemed unlikely.  Switch 2 supports two different versions of DLSS, the CNN model commonly used on PC and a custom variant commonly referred to as DLSS Lite.  DLSS Lite is inferior to DLSS CNN, but requires roughly half the rendering cost of the CNN model.  The primary blemish for DLSS Lite is a notable amount of aliasing for objects in motion.  DLSS Lite does seemingly still outperform AMD’s FSR2 and FSR3 which tend to resolve with more artifacting and ghosting.  DLSS, CNN and Lite, are terrific tools for developers that allow them render at low resolutions and still deliver good image quality.  However, its not the 4K magic bullet that some were expecting or hoping for.  1080p and 1440p will be far more common resolutions for DLSS on Switch 2.  

VRR is currently only supported in portable mode, implementing NVidia’s Gysnc.  This is a terrific feature that allows games with a variable framerate (40-60fps standard VRR range) to look far smoother with less judder.  Without VRR, many users would prefer a consistent 30fps update rather than a variable one that floats in the 40s and 50s, but thanks to VRR, developers can choose to leave it uncapped offering increased responsiveness without the off putting judder.  Switch 2 does not currently support VRR in docked mode, but thanks to some experiments that have been done with Steam Deck using the Switch 2’s dock, we know that its technically possible.  Hopefully this is implemented in a future firmware update.    

Switch 2 does come equipped with Ray Tracing cores  in the GPU, however, there is a very limited number of them.  I do believe we will see some games utilize them for hardware accelerated ray tracing, but expect it be very sparingly.  Its unclear if Star Wars Outlaws uses these RTU cores for the ray tracing and it may all be done in software.  Regardless, I do not expect broad support of ray tracing in Switch 2 games.  

Switch 2 comes equipped with a 256GB SSD drive.  While it certainly isn’t nearly as fast as the drives in the PS5 and Series consoles, it is roughly ten times as fast as the internal storage in the Switch or PS4.  This not only improves loading times, but also allows developers to leverage this speed to stream assets in and out of memory.  Games such as Star Wars Outlaws were designed with fast memory and the developer claims that it is crucial for their game to run properly.  

In conclusion, the features built into the Switch 2 were very forward thinking.  Features like DLSS, VRR and fast internal memory make it far more palatable for developers to include the Switch 2 for multi platform game development.  Raw performance may land slightly below a PS4 when in portable mode and docked mode seems to sit comfortably ahead of the PS4 but well below the Series S.  It really is the modern features that help establish Switch 2 as a current gen console rather than raw performance.