There are now new rumors about the Nintendo Switch 2 and the potential for its power.
Before we continue, we want to be clear that Nintendo has not commented on any of these rumors. Regardless of how trustworthy our sources and the other people reporting them are, we can’t take any of these rumors for fact.
The reason we are reporting on these rumors, even as we cannot corroborate any of them, is because the potential that the Switch 2 could have the abilities being talked about is newsworthy. It doesn’t mean we personally believe they are true. It does mean we are trying to find out how powerful the console will be, and we can’t avoid having to enter the world of rumors and speculation to talk about it.
The rumor is actually a few days old, but recently gained visibility again because it was shared by kopite7kimi. We will discuss the original rumor and what kopite7kimi said.
This rumor comes from 4chan, and was shared over at NeoGAF. To summarize:
Nintendo was going to use Nvidia’s T239, but that was in 2019. It wasn’t meant for the Switch 2, but actually the Switch Pro. Nvidia convinced Nintendo to abandon their plans, upgrading to a new SOC and moving on to a new console generation. Mainly, Nvidia argued that their T239 wouldn’t hit Nintendo’s feature set and battery targets.
Instead, Nvidia sold Nintendo on updating to the T254. The T254 was supposed to be the Atlan chip, an SOC chip for automobiles that Nvidia replaced with the Thor. Forbes reported on this announcement from Nvidia last year. Our source also claims it is based on the Lovelace architecture, and scales much better than the T239.
Now, we have to point out that last March, we reported on some rumors that were in the same vicinity but looked like a dead end. Connor / 코너 / コナー AKA Orexda believed they had information on a Nintendo chip that was to be manufactured by Samsung. They later reported that “Nvidia changed Atlan to Thor, they seems canceled the Tegra for Nintendo.”
So, it looks like Connor did have some insider information after all. They just didn’t know what Nvidia was planning, and didn’t know the full picture.
As for kopite7kimi, he is claiming that the T254 won’t actually be based on the Lovelace architecture, but the even newer rumored Blackwell architecture. If this is true, Nvidia’s Blackwell based products won’t be out until 2024 or 2025.
So Nintendo will have the newest hardware and technology Nvidia has to offer. But we must be clear, they won’t necessarily have the most powerful SOC or CPU. As kopite7kimi explained in a follow up tweet:
“Although the number of units(like GPCs or TPCs) in Blackwell will not increase significantly, there are significant changes in its unit structure.”
So the Switch 2’s SOC may be on the middle or lower end of Nvidia’s latest CPU line. But it will still be the newest, making it significantly more powerful than the Switch, and possibly better and more energy efficient than the Steam Deck.
As always, these rumors sound too good to be true. But we have to account for the possibility that it could be true is not a zero.