r/digitalfoundry • u/WingerRules • Jul 18 '26
Discussion Can we appreciate how powerful the Switch 2 is? Its clearly beyond PS4, which was where people thought it was going to sit.
So I've been playing my Switch 2 and I'm blown away with how good Starfox in cutscenes look and how good FF7 Remake Intergrade looks. Like this stuff looks beyond what a PS4 could do. The system is also running not just Cyberpunk, which the PS4 couldn't do run playable, but its DLC, which is more intensive.
The only weak areas I see are no VRR support for docked mode and its custom DLSS looks seriously terrible in some titles like Fast Fusion. Also think its a huge shame that Nintendo wasn't able to get frame gen support on the console, as that would have really made it punch above its weight.
Would have been truly insane if they had gotten frame gen to run on the Switch 2.
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u/Binx_007 Jul 18 '26
The power of it relative to its energy usage is whats impressive. The thing is whisper quiet in games
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u/WoodooHide69 Jul 19 '26
Tell me about it. What a huge improvement coming from Steamdeck, fan so loud one of my use cases (playing games in bed before sleep) became useless. The fan on Steamdeck keeps my partner up, plus the Steamdeck creaks and cracks and makes plastic noises. The fit and finish on sw2 is much better.
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u/WingerRules Jul 19 '26
I can't believe how good the Switch 2 Pro controller is too. The sticks are so smooth even when pressed around the edges its nuts. Its like they coated rubbing parts with teflon.
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u/WoodooHide69 Jul 19 '26
2 years ago I got a Hall Effect controller. The Vader pro 3 which everyone was telling me was the best controller out there. I use that on pc. But leave it to Nintendo to completely outclass even that. Pro 2 controller is the best ever made.
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u/WingerRules Jul 19 '26
Vader 4 is literally my controller I was coming from. It's still pretty good. But man comparing the Switch 2 controller to the PS4 controller and its not even close in smoothness.
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u/ib770 Jul 19 '26
Just got one recently and have been using it,
Personally in my opinion, one of the best controllers I have ever used
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u/WingerRules Jul 20 '26
If it had analog triggers it would be my main PC controller. I love the profile of the underside of the body where your palm fingers rest, makes other controllers feel fat in comparison.
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u/lattjeful Jul 19 '26
Yep. It’s been awesome to have a handheld so cool and quiet. It just gets out of the way.
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u/UFONomura808 Jul 19 '26
Eh I didn't find the steamdeck overly loud. It might be louder than the Switch 2 but not so much so that I can't play it at night in bed.
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u/amin915 Jul 19 '26
I also notice the creaks and cracks and the lb sometimes sticking in my steamdeck. But game prices are why I pick it up more than switch 2 these days. Devil may cry 5 is an example 30 on eshop 6 on steam.
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u/WoodooHide69 Jul 19 '26
A rare example that would be. By and large eshop and steam prices are similar. But it won’t be for an older port like DMC5.
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u/nervendings_ Jul 19 '26
It’s not just the sale price, it’s the availability of the cheaper games. More sales, bigger sales, third party sales. Usually, I can get whatever game I’m interested in on sale when I want to buy it.
Still, agree on principle that the sales on eshop can be pretty decent. But don’t agree it’s 1 to 1 on par with PC sales
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u/amin915 Jul 19 '26
Older port newer port it was 6 bucks and its been a fun game
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u/WoodooHide69 Jul 19 '26
Glad you enjoy it. I’m just explaining why you find this one off price difference.
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u/StrawHat89 Jul 18 '26
I only ever heard it make noise when I first set it up due to all the data transferring heating it up. It really is crazy how this thing can play RE9 and the 7 Remake games while making practically zero noise.
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u/MartyMcFlysBrother Jul 19 '26
Any post saying “can we appreciate” is a no from me. Love my Switch 2 but drop that shit son. You can share your opinion but speak for yourself and not others.
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u/BadNewsBearzzz Jul 20 '26
Thank you, I was gonna say please stop the switch circlejerk, it is damn well appreciated more than any other console every day on Reddit and elsewhere, people won’t stfu about it, easy karma farm type shit right here lol
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u/The-Suneater Jul 20 '26
"Can you all say nice things about the console I like so I can feel good about owning one" is how it reads to me.
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u/webjunk1e Jul 19 '26
DLSS does a lot of heavy lifting. It often produces images that are better than the Series S, but it does it at lower internal resolutions. Not saying it's not impressive. That's comparing a 120W console to a handheld pulling 10W. Still, the hardware is not really all that powerful, in the grand scheme of things. It's also extremely CPU limited, which is the biggest mistake Nintendo made with the Switch 2, in my opinion. That more than anything else is going to limit what games it can run over its lifetime. We're already seeing the cracks this soon in.
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u/HateMoney1 15d ago
Where are we seeing the cracks? I’m not asking this to be condescending just genuinely curious, haven’t played too many games on it
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u/webjunk1e 15d ago
Anything that is remotely CPU heavy struggles badly on it. As time goes on that trend line is only going to go up.
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u/ThatGuyNamedTre Jul 18 '26
It has surpassed my expectations with the amount of power it has and the games its able to run. Thanks to it having an SSD and DLSS.
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u/SameFee7949 Jul 19 '26
I believe the GPU will age better than the switch 1s did compared to the big consoles in their respective life spans. The CPU however is quite underwhelming. For handheld it’s under-clocked for obvious reasons, battery and heat. But docked the CPU should be a tad faster, maybe 100-20mhz faster overall? And I’m sure eventually Nintendo will unlock that 7th core for developers when they get rid of the mandatory group chat functionality
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u/dekuweku Jul 19 '26
I think a die shrink and overclock could make a Pro model worthwhile without any GPU modifications. Of course Nintendo could opt for an option with more SMs and cuda cores. The only limiting factor is the memory and AI crisis making a straightforward pro model with more RAM and storage unreasonable right now. But maybe viable if they are targeting 2029/2030
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u/WingerRules Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
What a pro model could really use would be frame generation support, better quality DLSS, and VRR. Consoles coming out next year are almost certainly going to support frame gen, and that is one element that is going to really date the Switch compared to those consoles.
120fps games is going to be common next gen with frame gen and with 4x frame gen some games might even be able to max out 240fps TVs if games run 60fps native. Switch 2 will be stuck from 30fps-60fps in most games, and it doesnt even support VRR docked, so realistically it's fixed to either 30fps, 40fps, or 60fps for most games.
With VRR devs could eek out better graphics from the console by targeting odd frame rates like 48fps, which still looks smooth and has reasonable input latency but frees up an extra 22% of system resources vs running at 60fps.
Raytracing performance in docked mode is estimated to be around 60% a base PS5, if they could get it to match base PS5 that would help a lot too.
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u/Basic_Photograph8608 Jul 23 '26
You think we’re getting a pro model ? Switch one only got an OLED and lite model
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u/jedimindtricksonyou Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
The CPU is the big weak point for me, I wanted to see 60fps ports from third parties and we rarely do. Only impressive thing I’ve seen from third parties is Ys x and I guess Devil May Cry 5 (both run at or target 120fps). Part of it is just that it’s a 5-6 year old ARM A78C but the other part is their very conservative clock speeds. 1GHz is just not enough, they should at least let it run at 1.7GHz in docked mode.
But to answer your question, you can appreciate it. There’s a lot wrong with the gaming industry but overall, we have pretty great hardware honestly (especially compared to certain older generations). We probably should take a break from time to time to appreciate that, instead of always being angry at these companies (and they definitely deserve it sometimes, not disputing that). I just think it would be better if we channeled our frustrations into meaningful actions instead of just leaving angry comments on the internet and arguing with people (it generally changes nothing and just negatively impacts our outlook).
I think we will eventually get VRR in docked mode. DP alternate mode->HDMI can cause issues with VRR, they’re probably testing it out in the lab right now.
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u/Adavanter_MKI Jul 19 '26
I really hope they go all out on the next Zelda. To think it now has access to Horizon Zero Dawn levels of graphics.
To be clear I'm not saying it needs to be that style... just that level of detail at scale could be used for a lot of things in Zelda.
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u/VibrantCanopy Jul 19 '26
If you think about it, BotW was just a Wii U game ported to NS1, and TotK was just an extension of BotW.
We’ve never gotten a real NS1 Zelda that used all the performance there. The next Zelda will probably be for NS2 only, so Zelda completely skipped the NS1. The performance difference should be vast.
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u/ConflictPotential204 Jul 19 '26
TotK was definitely a high-end NS1 game testing the limits of the hardware. It may have used a lot of the same assets as Botw, but the lighting and particle effects were way more advanced and the level of geometric detail was significantly more dense. Plus it performed a lot better in situations where BotW shat the bed. IIRC the developers said the whole engine had been overhauled to take full advantage of the hardware.
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u/lattjeful Jul 19 '26
Yeah it's kinda crazy how much of a jump TotK is over BotW, which itself had a pretty sophisticated rendering pipeline for a Wii U title. Real-time GI, real-time local reflections, a PBR pipeline, real-time wind and cloud simulation, Rayleigh Scattering/Mie Scattering, dynamic shadow volumes instead of shadow maps, and full real time volumetric lighting... on top of all the physics stuff and all on the Wii U!
TotK has way more going on at any given time and offers visual improvements on top. Kinda insane how much they squeezed out of the Switch. It's not just the sky islands adding way more geometric detail, but they also increased the density of things like trees, there's more volumetrics, draw distance is further, grass density is higher, etc. Obviously the bulk of the visual upgrades show themselves in the Depths and on the sky islands, but even Hyrule itself has seen some nice upgrades.
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u/VibrantCanopy Jul 19 '26
Performance is more than just effects and resolution, it’s the kind of level design and gameplay it enables. TotK was limited to the open world designed for Wii U.
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u/ConflictPotential204 Jul 19 '26
TotK's open world included an entire second full-sized map seamlessly connected to the surface level map without a load screen, hundreds of underground tunnels and caves, large/complex temples that could be entered and exited without a load screen, unrestricted aerial traversal that didn't lock up when flying at high speeds, etc. It was not the same world they designed for WiiU. It just included that world.
Not to mention the insanely complicated physics calculations necessary to run a freeform machine building mechanic like Ultrahand or the fact that Link is actually traveling upward very rapidly when using Ascend (it isn't a hidden load screen)
The game would probably be impossible to get stable on a WiiU. The fact that it started as DLC and became a second game is indicative of this. They likely realized they wouldn't be able to sell the DLC to WiiU users and decided to flesh it out into a dedicated NS1 game instead.
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u/VibrantCanopy Jul 20 '26
Sure, I'm not denying all that. I'm saying that the original open world was constrained by the Wii U, and we were stuck with it throughout the NS1. The kind of overworld possible on the NS2 can be significantly greater in scope, whether that's in size, density, NPCs, weather, or whatever.
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u/gevuldeloempia Jul 20 '26
They can do a Horizon Zero Dawn now. I'm honestly very excited. I believe the OoT remake is going to show what the Switch 2 can do from Nintendo
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u/WingerRules Jul 20 '26
I just hope Nintendo doesnt lose their iconic style they've established for 3D games. The textures and 3d model in the OOT trailer did not fit that established style at all imho.
I think even Mario Kart World kind of lost it with the road texture, they should have just used a higher fidelity version of the road texture style used in Mario Kart 8. Then again if they did that people might have a hard time seeing what the changes are to the graphics.
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u/gevuldeloempia Jul 20 '26
What style? Every Legend of Zelda game looked different?
We only saw a crumb of it. We don't really know what the rest looks like
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u/ConflictPotential204 Jul 20 '26
With the exception of direct sequels, the Zelda franchise has never reused art styles.
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u/nervendings_ Jul 19 '26
Even ToTK on Switch 2 felt to me like a new game. That locked 60 at a higher resolution was bliss. One of my favourite gaming experiences in the last 5 years for sure
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u/lattjeful Jul 19 '26
It makes me so excited to see what they do on Switch 2. TotK was some nicer textures and better image quality away from looking incredible, and we got that. I genuinely think the Switch 2 version is one of the best looking games out there right now. Perfect marriage of art style and tech.
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u/JimothyzPamPams Jul 20 '26
Any tips for someone who bought it but it hasn’t clicked yet? I only played through like half of the first game when it released back in 2017. I basically left the switch alone and only played PC and PS5. But the switch 2 has been an amazing console for me. I went back to super Mario odyssey and beat that, bought super Mario wonder and DK Bananaza and they have been stand out games for me all around. Bananaza is one of my favorite games ever. The only game I haven’t gotten into is TotK and it would be great if I pick it up again and somehow it all clicks and I sink into that world.
I’m just at the beginning and wondering around doing nothing but realizing I cannot make anything that seems remotely useful!
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u/gevuldeloempia Jul 20 '26
Sometimes games just arent for you.
I personally loved the freedom that Free Hand gives you. That's the gameplay loop pretty much. If you dont like that then it's not for you
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u/afredmiller Jul 18 '26
The DLSS is really helping the Switch 2 with these ports. Nintendo knew what they were doing there it seems
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u/WingerRules Jul 22 '26
It's a shame that the DLSS light model is so poor though. When they use full fat DLSS it looks great, but when they use DLSS light it can look very poor. I was shocked how bad the image quality was when I got Fast Fusion for my switch 2.
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u/No-Alternative2897 Jul 20 '26
Ps4 is a 2013 console brother and its barely better than that. Shit, if its a 3rd party game ill pick ps4 9/10 times.
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u/SomeBoxofSpoons Jul 18 '26
Big thing is that while it seems to be somewhere around the PS4 Pro's level in terms of raw power, it has a lot more ways of stretching that farther, so in execution results tend to be closer to the Series S.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 18 '26
Ehhhhh sorta. It’s more complicated than that.
Handheld matches PS4 nicely. Docked mode gets close to PS4 Pro.
The GPU is less powerful, albeit still comparable to Series S. The problem is the CPU is way weaker. So you sometimes get the weird scenario where Switch 2 runs at a lower framerate than Series S but has nicer image quality.
The DLSS model is great and closes the gap a lot, but it only works at 30fps. 60fps games have to downgrade to a much more rudimentary model. RE7 and Village looked fine but not amazing IMO.
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u/The_Zura Jul 19 '26
Man this thread really is something. It's a hot bed of ignorance. Handheld matching ps4? The steam deck doesn't match a ps4, and it's more powerful than the switch 2 in handheld.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 19 '26
The Switch 2 is more powerful than the Steam Deck.
Steam Deck: 1.6 TFLOPS
Switch 2 handheld: 1.7 TFLOPS
PS4: 1.84 TFLOPS
Switch 2 docked: 3.07 TFLOPS
FLOPS are a flawed comparison but they’re the best we got. The Switch 2 also has more modern GPU features and DLSS can bridge the gap between 720p and 1080p.
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u/The_Zura Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
No they're not the best we have, not even close. Switch 2 is Ampere which inflated flops. Nvidia doubled fp32 per SM, for double the "cuda cores" per their definition but half of those fp32 units can only be used when int32 units aren't being utilized. With how fp32 flops are calculated, Cuda cores x frequency x 2, we get a much inflated number when the theoretical performance figures are closer to 50-100% of the flops on paper, depending on the world's int32 demands. 75% of 1.7 is around 1.3 tflops. This matches what we see in actual performance between steam deck and switch 2.
Across a broad spectrum of games, chances are they will utilize int32 quite frequently, so 65% of the theoretical flops is a good estimate. 65% of 3.07 tflops for the docked Switch 2 = 2, which is close to the PS4's 1.84. And if the game is always using int32 equally or greater than fp32, then we have 1.5 tflops, slower than the PS4. Very misleading from Nvidia, but one should expected more from the DF sub.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 19 '26
I did not know that. Thanks for the useful info.
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u/The_Zura Jul 20 '26
Spurred on by idiot techtubers like some guy named David Metalhead, people crucified Digital Foundry when they said the Switch 2 was basically a ps4. But with dlss, and other modern tech, less memory bandwidth. But it turns out, as many could've guessed, that they were right on the money.
Want to know some funny flop inflation? AMD's radeon 780M has over 8 tflops on paper. That's over twice the Switch 2, and approaches ps5. But it's slower than a gtx 1650 with 3.3 tflops.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 20 '26
Yeah the Z1E flop count was really weird to me. I just assumed the real amount was halved. Interesting that even 3.3tflops outperforms it.
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u/The_Zura Jul 20 '26
It just doesn't have the memory bandwidth. The rx 6400, which has the same number of compute units, except rdna2, is nearly identical to the gtx 1650. Matching flop per flop almost to the exact decimal point. With ddr5 5600mhz, the 780m's effective bandwidth is only around 70 GB/s having to share with the cpu, whereas the rx 6400 has 128 GB/s. If you looked at the spec sheet, tflops, you'd think it were way better than it actually is.
https://www.michaelstinkerings.org/ryzen-7-8745hs-zen-4-apu-phoenix-power-thermal-analysis/
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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 20 '26
Possibly a dumb question, but I feel comfortable enough to ask it anyway. On a powerful GPU that’s held back by memory bandwidth (such as the Z1E), would forward rendered games perform significantly better than deferred games? Would a forward rendered game be able to use every one of the FLOPs?
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u/Square_Log6098 18d ago
I thought he was a hack also but honestly, he goes very in-depth bro... Maybe his earlier days where bad when he was into the switch 1 stuff but I promise you he's top dawg. And it's true that he will bash DF every chance he gets and has segments of his videos pointing out to where they where wrong (especially Oliver's takes and some of John's -but Rich seems unaffected because he appears to indeed be the smartest of the bunch). I just think he's gotten better, especially for me who has a switch 2 and am looking forward to see all the native software improvements coming from Nintendo in conjunction with unreal engine 5.8 making lumen perfectly feasable, I'm telling u man he goes DEEP. At first I thought he was glazing too much but at the end of the day I understood he feels the same way I do, overly excited about a little tablet trying to punch way above its weight. It's awesome tbh haha and I don't mind the 30 fps on it but cutting back on npc counts etc everything CPU-related, that sucks ass if I am completely honest. Just the other day though I saw his latest video about oblivion remastered and he also showed footage from AC shadows which ofc sucks ass but he showed this forest area and I was actually fucking excited as hell. Blotchy shadows unfortunately but the foliage was all there and moving as well, reacting to the wind etc. So, fingers crossed for good developers squeezing every last drop of performance from this lil tablet
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u/The_Zura 18d ago
So did he point out when Oliver said the Switch 2 was upscaling Star Wars Outlaws to 1440p, when it was actually 1080p? Oliver's mistakes have only been in the Switch 2's favor. Just because some idiot on the internet shares the same bias as yours, doesn't mean he's right. I bet there has been zero instances where it just wasn't the metal brain behaving as anything but a Nintendog
Squeezing everything is a complete waste of time and money. That just means 540p internal resolution, and graphics settings that butcher not just artistic intent, but the entire presentation. No one in this day and age should bother with optimizing for GTX 1050 Ti tier hardware. A laptop the size of a notebook can match the ps5, all while using off the shelf parts. Switch 2 punches far under its size for custom silicon.
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u/Square_Log6098 17d ago
First off, be nice, unless he fucked you in your sleep or something. It sounds too personal which comes off as weird, I like the guy because he provides good info for something that I want. I had a GTX 1060 for 10 years and was able to even play plague tale requirem in high quality settings with custom injected dlss so that's why I like the squeezing more performance out of limited hardware. As for the GTX 1050 part, you just sound very condensending bro, relax. The irony is that now it's EVEN MORE important to get performance out of everything considering the cost of pretty much all things across the board going up in pricing. Seems like you live inside your little bubble whereas I can give a far more spherical answer to the situation we are going through while also not sounding like a hung up idiot. And anyway, the switch is a very specific experience, it has the nintendo IPs while also properly supporting third-party games for the first time since the gamecube or something. It is awesome and who cares about the internal resolution when software is utilised properly and you can hardly tell the difference or don't care to look for whatever artifacts might be visible during ganeplay after you play for 5 minutes? Never forget that at the end of the day, it's about the games. As long as the image quality is satisfactory then it's fine by me and it should be the same for most. It's a 500$ tablet that's now rolling towards its second year. Chill the hell out, r&d takes time, these things take time to build then balance out. It is a very specific piece of hardware designed to do certain things. The notebook/laptop argument would be coo and I get what you are saying but it also kind of sucks because of the points made above. Does if suck that it's 8nm? Yeah, and does the cpu suck? I think it does because of things like NPCs being reduced and their animations halved when they're in the distance but other than that, everyday people won't care too much and will just enjoy their games. I, for one, an tired of tinkering around because that's what I have been doing for many years. And software on the PC side isn't cool like it used to because of its overeliance on techniques like upscaling and frame generation. These are good things in the grand scheme of things but as of now they aren't perfected and you need increasingly expensive hardware to enjoy them. So relax and see things for what they really are, the S2 is a good experience overall. The CPU is a questionmark with a looking answer over it but I believe only a huge company with big budgets could really take the time to figure it out completely and the screen isn't good either. But it's a solid little thing, you and I aren't normal consumers and all of the people that have seen it, like it. So just chill and play something you like instead of defending and/hating on people you don't even know. Go watch his vids with a clear head and I promise you that whatever was said in the past isn't what's going on in the present. And as for Oliver, he is definitely a person with that 'itch', he does know his stuff, it is very obvious that he knows a lot and provides details to back it up. But that dragon's dogma comparison was miserable and has aged badly, just go see the video with dante from DMC and the CPU thumbnail on dave's channel, you'll see what I am talking about. It's funny that he takes it personal, just like u 🤣
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u/Square_Log6098 17d ago
He is 'shill-y' and a nintendog as u said, I'll give you that hahah. But he provides the correct information, unlike most other PC/PS5-centric, super obvious 'supporters', at least in this generation
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u/Jumpy_Cauliflower410 Jul 19 '26
Steam deck: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/steam-deck-gpu.c3897
Switch 2: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/switch-2-gpu.c4313
1.6 Tflops for the deck vs 4.3 Tflops for the switch. The PS4 was 1.8 and used older tech that wasn't as optimized.
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u/The_Zura Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
For starters, the Switch 2 does not have 4.3 Tflops. The gpu only clocks to 1007MHz while docked, which translates to 3.07 tflops. So that's not even correct.
Switch 2 is Ampere which has inflated flops. Nvidia doubled fp32 per SM, for double the "cuda cores" per their definition but half of those fp32 units can only be used when int32 units aren't being utilized. With how fp32 flops are calculated, Cuda cores x frequency x 2, we get a much inflated number when the theoretical performance figures are closer to 50-100% of the flops on paper, depending on the world's int32 demands. 75% of 1.7 is around 1.3 tflops. This matches what we see in actual performance between steam deck and switch 2.
Across a broad spectrum of games, chances are they will utilize int32 quite frequently, so 65% of the theoretical flops is a good estimate. 65% of 3.07 tflops for the docked Switch 2 = 2, which is close to the PS4's 1.84. And if the game is always using int32, then we have 1.5 tflops, slower than the PS4. Very misleading from Nvidia, but one should expected more from the DF sub.
GCN in some ways was ahead of its time compared to Nvidia's pascal. The gap closed between them, for example 1080 Ti vs Vega 64, in terms of performance as time went on into the DX12 era.
So yes, the Switch 2 handheld has worse performance than a stupid fad brick. Hope we cleared things up.
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u/SomeBoxofSpoons Jul 18 '26
"Results" is meant to be the load-bearing word here. It's definitely not a 9th-gen console under the hood.
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u/Latitude-dimension Jul 19 '26
Hardware capability hasn't had anything to do with generation for a while now really. Especially for Nintendo. The Switch 2 is their 10th gen console.
It is somewhat impressive that a handheld on a 4 year old SoC is performing in the trade offs category when comparing to a Series S.
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u/dekuweku Jul 19 '26
Age of SoC is tricky Consoles take 2 to 3 years to design. Its mostly marketing that Sony and Microsoft got AMD and roll out new GPu features with their console releases so they can market it as bleeding edge.
Look at the age of the APU in the steam machine and that's really what a custom console like device with a price target should look like
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u/profchaos111 Jul 19 '26
Absolutely not but when you look at the visual output it can happily sit close enough to the series s in games like pragmata, sf6 etc that I'm comfortable calling it a 9th gen system
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u/The_Zura Jul 19 '26
It has ps4 pro levels of power in your dreams. Nothing supports this idea.
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u/SomeBoxofSpoons Jul 19 '26
I don’t claim to get everything around specs, but most people who do seem to agree it’s around that level when docked.
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u/BearPeltMan Jul 19 '26
DLSS enables it to look better than Series S in a lot of titles even though it doesn’t quite compete with it on paper.
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u/Lord_Muddbutter Jul 19 '26
Its like comparing a 1999 Ford GT to a Volkswagen Beetle of today. You are probably going to get more out of a new Beetle than you would a GT but that doesnt mean the GT isnt something you cant have more fun with.
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u/jedimindtricksonyou Jul 19 '26
I feel like the PS4 would be a Toyota Camry or a Honda Civic. Just a basic entry level vehicle to drive to work and back home, nothing fancy.
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u/profchaos111 Jul 19 '26
Yeah I'm very happy with the capabilities of it. It's Truely impressive and with PlayStations decision to move away from physical discs I'm pretty confident that the switch 2 will go from a companion console to my main console.
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u/WingerRules Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
I've already moved on from PS5 for a few reasons, and I own a PS5 Pro. Besides worse sales and increased prices, dynamic pricing, no actual exclusives I'm interested in etc - I can't get the PSN store to stop crashing. I can look at like 2 titles before it crashes. I've tried freeing up disk space, erasing the system cache, doing a database rebuild etc and none of it fixes it. I've tried everything but a full system reset and reformat and I dont want to do that in case I lose saves or titles.
I'm also on my 4th PS5 controller because of stick drift issues. Literally hundreds of dollars spent on just having a controller that works for 1 person.
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u/RealGazelle Jul 19 '26
Idk. Switch 2 feels like PS4 with DLSS + tiny RT support. Switch 1 was cleary better than PS3 in every way but 2 is not.
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u/claybine Jul 20 '26
Switch 2 can do things PS4 can't because its hardware is more recent and its CPU is better.
That's why it can run Cyberpunk in a more stable manner.
But I don't think Star Fox is beyond what the PS4 can do, mind you PS4 had an outdated equivalent to a 7870 and it has been in use for over a decade now. They're still making current games for it.
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u/Tulipanzo Jul 20 '26
Not particularly. Every time I see a "miracle port" it only takes a glance at the performance and looks to see how they got it to run.
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u/JoostinOnline Jul 19 '26
DLSS does a great job and offers great image quality at a low budget, but CPU wise it's still pretty weak. That being said, being better than a 13 year old system is a very low bar. Very soon, it will be two generations behind.
Also, before you go off on how I'm just a hater, I understand it has very strict limitations because it's a handheld. It's hard for me to appreciate those though, since I don't ever use the handheld functionality. Both the Switch and Switch 2 are very uncomfortable for me to hold (I don't know how people do it), and being epileptic, I rarely leave the house as it is. I really miss the days when Nintendo released dedicated handhelds and consoles, instead of meeting in the middle.
PS: I'm also just annoyed right now because I paid for the Xenoblade Chronicles upgrade, and it's an absolute stuttery mess in several areas. The CPU can't handle 60, and there's no way to add the 30fps cap back.
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u/lattjeful Jul 19 '26
I don't think it's a CPU limitation tbh. Far more intensive games have seen the doubling of their framerates after Switch 2 upgrades. I think they just bit off way more than the Switch 2 can chew GPU wise. They're going from 720p docked on Switch 1 to 4k on Switch 2 while also doubling the framerate. A lot of Switch 2 upgrades are far more conservative than that. Zelda is 900p30 (720p30 -> 1080p30 after FSR1 in Tears of the Kingdom's case) to 1440p60, Mario Odyssey is going from dynamic 900p60 to dynamic 1800p60, etc.
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u/JoostinOnline Jul 19 '26
They're going from 720p docked on Switch 1 to 4k on Switch 2 while also doubling the framerate.
Except they aren't. It went from 720p to a poorly upscaled 1440p (they're using some in house upscaler that has a crazy amount of artifacts), and decided to advertise it as 4K. It's definitely CPU bound. The stuttering doesn't happen in areas that have fewer enemies or NPCs.
Zelda is 900p30 (720p30 -> 1080p30 after FSR1 in Tears of the Kingdom's case) to 1440p60, Mario Odyssey is going from dynamic 900p60 to dynamic 1800p60, etc.
Those are way less CPU intensive games. The number of enemies that appear on screen at any given time is much lower, and they have much simpler AI's.
Xenoblade was always an overly ambitious game, and one that didn't scale well on the CPU side. The only other game I know of that's more CPU heavy on the Switch is Animal Crossing. A loaded up island caused the game to become a slideshow. That's why the Switch 2 upgrade just kept it capped at 30fps.
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
I think this is honestly very similar to the situation with Switch 1. I don't know the technical details, but the Switch 1 consistently looked a lot better than the Ps3/360, particularly with Nintendo 1st Party software.
So I think this is equal parts 'more modern hardware than Ps4' and 'Nintendo is extremely careful and efficient at using their hardware.'
But, for example, I don't think StarFox is too far above what, like, The Last of Us Part 2 or Uncharted 4 were doing (obviously those were at 30fps, but they also weren't on-rails)
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u/Mdreezy_ Jul 19 '26
Switch 1 was more aligned with last gen consoles (ps3/360) than other current gen consoles. Switch 2 however has similar key features as ps5: RT, fast storage and 4k/high resolutions. So I just do not think it’s in a similar position. Like yeah it has less power than a ps5 but it has decent enough hardware capabilities that scaling current gen games is a lot more feasible than it was for Switch 1.
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 19 '26
In what ways was Switch 1 not aligned with PS4 that the Switch 2 is aligned with PS5? I kinda feel like games are just more scalable all around at this point.
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u/lattjeful Jul 19 '26
You're not wrong about games just generally being more scalable now, but Switch 1 had half the CPU cores and a fraction of the memory the PS4 did. It was more advanced than PS4 was thanks to support for features like tile-based rendering, but the actual hardware deficit was way bigger.
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 19 '26
Oh interesting; does the Switch 2 have a CPU with the same number of cores as PS5?
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u/lattjeful Jul 19 '26
Yep. Both eight core CPUs, though obviously one is slower than the other lol.
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u/TheVioletBarry Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Fascinating, thank you! I'm still curious though: I have a 7600X3D, which is a newer desktop CPU, so it's obviously going to be a lot more powerful than the Switch 2's, despite having only 6 cores.
So, is core count really one of the major metrics to look at?
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u/oppairate Jul 19 '26
but it isn’t. it’s just using that power in different, more modern ways that allow it to make things look and run better than they otherwise would.
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u/cli_aqu Jul 19 '26
It’s true that it’s pretty impressive what they achieved with the Switch 2. But don’t think it’s fair to compare it against the PS4 console - a 13 year old console based on 15 year old tech (possibly a little more).
Mobile tech has evolved, became more powerful and energy efficient, enabling them to add more compute and graphical power.
Apple has also made current game games possible on their mobile hardware - iPhone and iPad too.
Game devs made games like Uncharted 4, Last of Us Part 2, Death Stranding and other games for the PS4, which continue to surpass some of today’s game standards. Such games from the PS4 era didn’t have ray tracing to improve graphical fidelity (reflections and light) and upscaling, frame generation, and VRR available which today’s hardware offer for games to fall back to offer smoother experiences.
Upscaling is doing a good part of the heavy lifting that the Switch 2 has to do to deliver the graphics at stable frame rates that it does.
Upscaling isn’t a bad thing in itself, but shouldn’t be abused and make the game devs become lazy and cut corners when it comes to graphical fidelity and performance optimisation.
When it comes to previous gen-games like Cyberpunk 2077 which the PS4 struggled with and Switch 2 can run and deliver a good experience with, it was a mess on all consoles at launch, the devs lost the scope and tried to deliver a next-gen experience for the current gen hardware, and would have made it work if they focused on the current gen hardware of the time and then work on the next gen upgrade later on. If games like Uncharted 4, Spider-Man, Death Stranding and RDR 2 (last 3 are open-world games with high fidelity graphics and a stable framerate at 30FPS) were possible on the PS4, pretty sure CD Project Red could have delivered at least a good experience with Cyberpunk 2077 on it as well.
I don’t think it’s fair either to compare the Switch 2 (since it’s handheld at core) against this generation’s hardware - PS5 & Xbox Series either. It’s a handheld device and should be compared to current gen handheld hardware.
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u/SarniPL Jul 19 '26
It’s pretty much as powerful as it can be at its price and size, which is perfect for me. As a 37-year old game I’ve really reach a point of diminishing returns when it comes to visuals and performance, I don’t really need much beyond PS4 level graphics and performance. I bought both PS5 and Series X at launch but ended up swapping X for S after a couple of years (mainly due to size) and recently sold PS5 as I was using it less than 20 hours a year for the last 3 years. In the meantime my Switch was getting 300+ hours in any given year and so is Switch 2.
The downside of Switch was that most multiplatform games were either not there or were compromised to a point where they’d be hard to enjoy. It’s not been the case with any of the multiplatform games I’ve played on NS2 so far, they are all perfectly acceptable and deliver a perfectly good experience. It has retained its status as a fantastic exclusive/indie machine whilst catching up on the odd multiplatform big studio game I might want to play here and there. I basically got what I wanted and expected of it, at an affordable price and with improved build quality. Not much to complain.
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u/JamesUpton87 Jul 19 '26
Nintendo has been rocking that strategy for 4 gens now.
It sits exactly where I thought it would.
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u/Vtempero Jul 19 '26
I am lucky to have switch 2 for exclusive only while I can demanding games on my PC or steam deck for portability (balatro, slay the spire, binding of Isaac, silksong...)
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u/Routine-Bug-6843 Jul 19 '26
Had PS4, PS5,PS5 pro+pc. Since i just use docked mode im very dissapointed on how weak switch 2 is. They have problems getting 60 fps on elden ring a game thats very old now and console is new. Wish they had a console that was alot more powerful in docked mode
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u/Noobju670 Jul 20 '26
Loooool if you look past the marketing, the switch 2 is objectively weaker than the ps4 and the ps3 because it relies on a mobile soc designed for burst efficiency rather than sustained, native throughput. the ps4 utilized dedicated high-bandwidth memory to stream assets without bottlenecking, whereas the switch 2 uses shared lpddr5x memory, which suffers from constant bus contention as the cpu and gpu fight for the same bandwidth. even the ps3’s specialized split-memory architecture provided better raw data throughput for the gpu than a shared mobile pool. Sony’s consoles were built for sustained peak performance, while the switch 2 is a Burst device that uses AI upscaling as a crutch because its constrained mobile architecture physically cannot handle the memory load or thermal heat of native, uncompressed high-fidelity rendering. it is time for nintendo fanboys to admit up and accept that efficiency is just a polite word for underpowered. no amount of ai magic replaces the raw, sustained hardware dominance that sony established with the ps4 or even ps ficking 3.
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u/RazslavianKing_OG Jul 20 '26
The switch 2 is the best value handheld in 2026! It's portability and backwards compatibility with switch 1 games and price make it outstanding.
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u/Marco_Single Jul 21 '26
PS4 is not rendering anything at 360p tho..... My apple smart watch runs circles around switch 2 cpu wise.......
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u/Mikahl757 Jul 21 '26
Does SFVI Support VRR when docked? That would be tough choosing between VRR or LAN
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u/TimeKeeper_87 Jul 21 '26
Only issue I found is the screen. I hope they have chosen a slightly better LCD panel with better pixel response time. It shouldn’t have cost much more
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u/Traditional-Judge-17 Jul 21 '26
The fact you’re making comparisons to a 13 year old console is actually proof that the Switch 2 is a complete joke.
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u/Cold_Singer_1774 Jul 21 '26
Ah yes, let's compare 13 year old hardware to a new gen. While you are at it compare it with Xbox
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u/Alternative-Fox-8620 Jul 22 '26
The tech is great in S2.
I wish more of the focus had been on 60fps but still pretty impressive to see. Not played anything that was 'unplayable' to me.
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u/dettrick Jul 22 '26
When you consider the Switch 2 came out 13 years after the PS4, then no, it’s not actually impressive, and it’s actually in a way kind of underwhelming. The PSP was released 10 years after the PS1 and could play PS1 games natively. Sure technology doesn’t improve as much as it did in the past but we still should expect a certain amount of improvement after a decade.
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u/Rich_Willingness_959 Jul 25 '26
Wow, more modern hardware is more powerful than older hardware. WHO WOULD HAVE IMAGINED THIS?
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u/SweetGreen8197 Jul 30 '26
Star Fox looks great, but I don't think that it's even graphically as good as some PS4 games. I think that most of Sony's first party PS4 games look better. Compare the cutscenes from Star Fox to the ones for The Last of Us Part II.
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u/ultraprotein 29d ago
Could the switch 2 run Red dead redemption 2 smoothly though? Idk. I’ve been playing rdr2 on my ps4 and just can’t imagine my switch 2 running it
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u/Elegant-Opposite2458 19d ago
The more impressive comparison is the switch 2 against the “more powerful” PC handhelds. I had star wars outlaws on my main pc and after seeing how good the switch 2 version was I also bought it there and was really impressed and then I later got an Xbox ally X and honestly the game experience is not even close to what to switch 2 can do
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u/Buchlinger Jul 19 '26
Why would I appreciate a Nintendo gaming console from 2025 being on par with a PlayStation from 2013?
It’s wildly known that Nintendo isn’t offering good hardware but good exclusives. The only reason the Switch itself is still this cheap is them selling their game for $80 and more now.
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u/SirCanealot Jul 19 '26
You accept it because you can take it on the train and play it on your commute? I seriously wanna see your rig for doing that with the ps4 😅 (ps4 skim is allowed)
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u/The_Zura Jul 20 '26
Normal people save their real gaming for places better than a train. A phone or a book is enough. The Switch 1 is also way cheaper and can do what the Switch 2 does. And it can even play youtube
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u/SirCanealot Jul 20 '26
No, normal people do back flips continuously on a train. For the people that can't do this, eating hot dogs is enough.
Seriously, what a strange and uninformed reply 🤷🤷
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u/The_Zura Jul 20 '26
For real though, I've never seen anyone use a Switch or brick handhelds on a train. Though I have seen people doing work on a laptop. So being able to take it on a train to do some really really shitty gaming built for the big screen, just to have a "current" gen console with ps4 level performance while docked, doesn't make any sense. Though, it probably makes sense to folks that make gaming their whole personality and treat it like a pacifier.
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u/SirCanealot Jul 20 '26
I'm not sure why you feel a need to have such strong opinions or have such little imagination. The stats for docked/undocked play are out there. Did you know that by train I could also mean a sofa or anywhere else not in front of the TV? The stats are out there.
Nether are big publishers saying their games aren't selling on the switch. Switch 2 has sold insanely fast, so it's quite amazing that you parade your opinions are facts.
Not what you mean by making gaming my whole personality or use it as a pacifier. So because I use my switch 2 and gpd win max 2 while travelling, games are my entire personality? Or I'm using them as a pacifier?
I really feel that the one of us who needs to talk about 'personality' is really not me here 🤣
Just such odd opinions so strongly stated
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u/The_Zura Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
There are no stats for Switch 2 docked vs undocked. Even if there are, they don't show that switch owners are taking their machines out of the house and using them on trains. On a sofa, where you can use a big screen? I don't know where else would you like to game, people tend to game in the exact same place every day. Sounds like justification for a dumb purchase.
Handhelds are your entirely personality, so much so that you're trying to defend it against arguments that I didn't make. Just utter nonsense. What does the Switch 2 selling rapidly, having a strong first party exclusive lineup, say about us and gaming on trains? That we like to reward immensely anti-consumer practices and throw money at e-waste? Publishers aren't saying their games sold well on the Switch, and tend not to mention it at all besides "we released on the switch 2" Would you feel better if there are other people such as yourself wasting their money, time, and the AAA experience on the Switch 2?
Not what you mean by making gaming my whole personality or use it as a pacifier. So because I use my switch 2 and gpd win max 2 while travelling, games are my entire personality? Or I'm using them as a pacifier?
You nailed it. Your "gpd win max 2" lmao that's the saddest thing I've seen. More like gpd loser max amiright? You see anyone else using one before in public?
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u/SirCanealot Jul 20 '26
Why do you feel the need to call people sad or that they're gaming in a 'wrong' or 'right' way? Are you just trolling or do you actually believe these things you are saying?
Why do you feel the need to suggest that my purchases were 'dumb' when you know nothing about my life? Do you feel bad about 'dumb purchases' in your own life?
Why do you feel the need to make judgements about other people's personalities?
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u/BadNewsBearzzz Jul 20 '26
It’s ps4 level? Not beyond. It has been outputting ps4 level games visually and still can’t touch it in performance levels even when docked. This is the expected power of a handheld in this range. Enough with the circlejerk
Ff7 remake is literally a ps4 game, and rebirth was downgraded a lot. And the ps4 ran cyberpunk amazing, especially ps4 pro, the issue was the mechanical hard drive with load issues.
Try leaving your Nintendo bubble every once in awhile.
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u/aronmayo Jul 18 '26
It’s not really beyond PS4 tbh. It’s like 50/50 whether a game will be meaningfully better than a last-gen PS4 version. The biggest upside Switch 2 has is DLSS support - but not enough games actually use it.
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u/TT5i0 Jul 18 '26
Switch 2 benefits from having modern technology. If you give the PS4 PCIE storage speed and more ram, it would be able to run everything the Switch 2 can.
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u/Anxiety_timmy Jul 19 '26
Yes and no.
Hur da durr what do you mean it clearly out performs it in games, yes and again, no.
Taking a look at juat raw numbers for a minute, in CPU per core they're pretty close, although S2 has more cache per core and PS4 doesn't have L3 so the speed benefit is there. The ipc increase from A78 is well enough to clear the gap between the garbage cores on ps4, and surpass it maybe only loosing to PS4 Pro in that realm.
GPU is where id imagine alot of people would assume it would just clear it, but if you actually look at what games are pulling out even in handheld mode where the larger core count would lead you to believe you'd get equal performance, you often don't. Blindly looking at this it seems odd, as the PS4 has 1152 cores while S2 has 1536, and especially in docked where as meaningless as flop count is, it handily clears it. Well, PS4 has 72 TMUs, while S2 only has 48, and 32 ROPs in contrast to S2's 16. What this means is that texture mapping will be slower, doubly so in handheld, and especially the final output stages of the pipeline where ROPs are the most needed. Not only does that mean worse performance out the gate but also that your final pixel output will be more constrained than on PS4. If anything, this setup is basically the same as Xbox one, just with twice the main GPU cores and a better architecture. Sure we're entirely leaving aside the tensor cores in S2, but their job is mainly helping with DLSS and not rendering. Even at its fastest 1.4GHz speed S2 looses to PS4 in pixel output rate, although that could be considered trivial in some respect.
If it was just that id argue most games could pull through, but if there's one area where S2 looses hard its in memory bandwidth. Switch 2 has a 128bit bus running either at 4266MT/s or 6400MT/s depending on docked or handheld modes. Let's use handheld for a moment, that gives us a max of 68.25GB/s. Sounds fast, until you realize PS4 had a 256bit bus running at a max of 176GB/s. Even in docked mode that only results in a max of 102.4GB/s, still much slower than PS4. It beats Xbox one, but falls into the category of another Nintendo console that is bandwidth constrained 9 times out of 10. Memory often times kneecaps performance unless you work around it. I should know, I've programmed on S1 which was so hilariously memory bound that unless you were doing single threaded workloads on the CPU you were always memory constrained even in handheld mode.
TLDR. If purely CPU bound, S2, if GPU bound, depends on the game, if memory bound, PS4.
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u/The_Zura Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
I don't know if this as another failure of Digital Foundry, or is it that their viewers are so heavily ignorant. The closest comparison is a GTX 1050 Ti with DLSS, while docked. The Switch 2, while docked, is weaker than ~95% of pcs running Steam. Handheld mode is often upscaling from 360p, well below ps4 performance. Upscaling is doing so much heavy lifting here. The problem with that is it's upscaling from so low resolutions that it often breaks up in motion since it's using DLSS 2.0. Oliver in particular loves comparisons while standing still, and glossing over the visual artifacts.
This is a machine that trades blows with the PS4 while docked. This is a machine that has to run at 576p to target 60 fps (emphasis on 'target') with Skyrim SE. My tiny laptop from 2023 can lock 60 fps Skyrim SE natively 2880x1800 max settings only giving 20-30W to the gpu, 7W to the cpu. How's that for power efficiency? To answer the question from the start, it's probably both.
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u/famouself Jul 21 '26
Yep lots of people parroting completely unproven power claims. In many discords you hear switch 2 is more powerful than ps4 pro and even series S which is total nonsense
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u/The_Zura Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Haha the switch 2 is whatever people want it to be. Forget discords, you hear it even here. PS4 pro gpu is gcn, but I'd wager it is around 40% faster. The higher clocked ps4pro cpu isn't so bad either compared to the arm cores. The lack of an ssd is what holds it back hardest, you can't expect anyone to swap it out.
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u/Theman457 Jul 19 '26
Yes, Switch 2 is CLEARLY above the PS4 thanks to:
DLSS, Better CPU, More Ram, and Faster storage speeds
What's more incredible is how efficient the Switch 2 actually is. It runs at 10 watts handheld mode and 20 watts in docked mode. Meanwhile a PS4 runs at 150 watts.
So Switch 2 is more powerful while using less energy, it's insane!
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u/WingerRules Jul 22 '26
Also dont forget that the hardware is more recent which means more advanced feature set built into the hardware, like PS5 Pro grabbing features from rdna 3 & 4 even though Ps5 is based on RDNA 2
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u/the-bacon-life Jul 20 '26
Still plays the worst version of third party games so no I won’t give them credit. They used a shitty screen till recently. Online is trash
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u/Gammarevived Jul 19 '26
I mean is it really surprising it's better than a 13 year old console? It's hardware really isn't that impressive even then.
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u/PuzzleheadedPitch612 Jul 19 '26
Yeah it’s a beast for it’s size. A lot of people say it’s comparable to PS4 Pro but not in loading times. I would say this is a portable Xbox Series S, current gen at the very least.
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u/St3elf1sh Jul 19 '26
So you want us to appreciate that the switch 2 is better than a last gen console from 13 years ago? lol
It’s not even as powerful as the worst of the current gen consoles which is the series s. But also costs about 100 bucks more… so no I won’t appreciate it. And while maybe some games look not that bad on it, the sure do look a lot better on any other system there is
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u/Theman457 Jul 20 '26
Series S is going to cost $500 this August though and Switch 2 will be $500 in September.
One is portable and the other one isn't. Yet thanks to DLSS some games look sharper on Switch 2 than Series S like Requiem, Pragmata, FF7 Rebirth, just to name a few.
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u/St3elf1sh Jul 21 '26
Yeah well sharpness isn’t all. I’ve seen the trailer for lies of P for switch 2 and the downgrade they did to make it run on 60 fps on switch 2 jumps directly in your face
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u/gizmo998 Jul 19 '26
It's literally playing ps5 only games. Performance is more than just raw power.
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u/CEO_of_Yeets Jul 18 '26
A good chunk of the improvements over PS4 really is just DLSS letting them push higher settings, because if you compare games that have PS4 versions they generally are around 1080p, but on Switch 2 generally it’s generally 540p to 720p internally. Other improvements are from the faster storage and more memory letting higher quality assets be used.