The Nintendo Switch 2 is twice the console as the original Switch, not just in size but in hardware specifications as well. We finally have a full idea of what’s going on under the hood of the $450 handheld set to launch on June 5. The long and short of it is that the Switch 2 is good enough to play today’s games. So long as it hits 4K when docked and gives us unique games with beautiful visuals, “good enough” is all it ever needed to be.
A report from Eurogamer alongside Digital Foundry’s latest video on the Switch 2 effectively confirm all the pre-reveal leaks we had about the handheld’s processor and other hardware specs. The original Switch ran on a custom Nvidia chip based on the Tegra X1 with just four ARM Cortex A57 cores. That system on a chip (SoC) was relatively low-powered, even back in 2017 when Nintendo brought us its first dockable handheld console.
Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter got his information off of shipping manifests and some other leaks, and collated with Nintendo’s official specs page, they help establish a better picture of the Switch 2’s hardware. The new CPU on the Switch 2 is the Nvidia T239 with ARM Cortex A78C cores. There are eight cores in total with a “theoretical” max clock speed of 1.7GHz (actually clock speeds in docked and mobile modes are far lower). Two of those CPU cores are reserved for the system software while developers get to play with the other six. The GPU is similarly updated to Ampere architecture with 1,536 CUDA cores (essentially processing units inside the GPU). That’s six times the number of CUDA as the original Switch.
The system is running on 12GB of RAM, of which 3GB is reserved for the system itself. That plus the CPU makes it seem like Nintendo is dedicating a hefty chunk of processing for the system itself, but considering what sort of under-the-hood software the Switch 2 is promising, it starts to make more sense. Nintendo has held up its GameChat feature as one of its handheld’s standout capabilities. This feature will let up to four players at a time use voice chat online with the console’s built-in speaker. A separate camera accessory also lets you host video chats as well, though videos suggest it will be at a very low frame rate with dubious visual quality. Any system, let alone something as compact as the Switch 2, would struggle to support four simultaneous streams while running any voice and video modulation software in the background—all while running games as well.
“Information we discovered suggests [GameChat] has a significant impact on system resources, to the point Nintendo provides developers with a GameChat testing tool,” Digital Foundry claimed, though without citing a specific source.
These specs imply Nintendo wants the Switch 2 to be a device that lasts for a long time, perhaps as long as the original Switch’s eight-year lifespan. The upcoming device’s secret sauce is its support for Nvidia’s DLSS—the company’s upscaling tech that takes each frame at a lower resolution and uses AI to bring it to a higher resolution. The device should also support DLAA, Nvidia’s software dedicated to anti-aliasing. This digital trickery will support games like Cyberpunk 2077 to enable 60 fps at 1080p resolution.
As much as the nerdiest of us love to geek out and speculate on tech specs, the Switch 2 isn’t built to compete against an Xbox or a PlayStation 5. Nintendo is one of the few companies that realized aiming for the greatest graphical fidelity is a losing game for console makers and developers alike. Pushing the most realistic graphics mandates more expensive hardware and longer, more expensive game development. What changes in the minute-to-minute play experience when a game’s running high-end ray tracing technology for ultra-realistic lighting? The Switch 2 may be able to handle some ray tracing scenarios, according to the Digital Foundry report. However, it will be up to developers to use that lighting tech within the bounds of Nintendo’s hardware.
Hogwarts Legacy Switch 1 vs Switch 2 pic.twitter.com/vcWRNSVWk0
— Switch 2 Stock Alerts (fan account) (@Switch2Stock) May 14, 2025
We’ve seen some games running on the Switch 2, and already it’s proving itself powerful enough for today’s games like Hogwarts Legacy—a game that notoriously looked horrible and ran poorly on the original Switch. Minuscule graphical touches aside, we expect most players will struggle to tell whether Street Fighter 6 is being played on a PS5 Pro versus a Switch 2, so long as it maintains a stable frame rate. If the first Switch proved anything, it’s that developers can get some relatively complex games running on older hardware if they try. Now, they just have to try a little less and maybe remember that a strong visual style is far better than ultra-realistic lighting and HD textures.
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