Rumor: Switch 2 Motherboard Analysis Finds It Has A Samsung 8nm Ampere SOC

The motherboard for the Switch 2 allegedly leaked a few days ago. Of course, most of us don’t have the technical knowledge to make sense of it, so how could we even start to understand what it means? Thankfully, we may now be in a position to do that.

Reddit user zcomuto shared their analysis of the alleged leaked motherboard images on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit. zcomuto looked at the images and the markings of the different components, and also compared that to the information found from Hosiden’s shipping data from September of last year. So you can expect this analysis to be consistent with that earlier rumor, and we are all working on the assumptions that both rumors are accurate.

We would like to clarify here now that one should not be surprised if the final Switch 2 will turn out to have completely different internals. zcomuto is working on the assumption that the images are real, and that they will be the same parts in the final console. So we thank zcomuto for their analysis here, and look forward to what we find out about the final device when it comes out.

zcomuto believes that the SOC which codenamed GMLX30-R-A1 in Hosiden’s shipping data is an Ampere CPU, specifically made by Samsung’s 8nm. We’ll skip on the technical details here; the reason gamers are up in arms about this is Ampere was a microarchitecture introduced in 2020. While it’s very power efficient, some gamers were hoping that Nintendo would choose to use a newer chip, specifically one using the Lovelace architecture. Lovelace was introduced last year and is more power efficient than Ampere, bringing it closer to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series in power.

But we would caution those gamers not to look a gift horse in the face. When Nvidia announced Samsung would be making the RTX 30 Series of GPUs, Samsung settled with their 8nm process because they were having trouble with their 5nm yield. In other words, Samsung was making too many faulty 5nm chips to be practical.

So Nintendo may have chosen a weaker SOC than what was available. But given that they have to meet gigantic demand, they can’t take chances on suppliers and parts that may not meet expectations. They would definitely be facing bigger issues if they committed to more powerful hardware that brought a new generation of red rings and yellow lights.

As we also explained yesterday, even this choice of hardware may not be the hard limit on how games will perform on the Switch 2. If the Switch 2 is using the Nintendo patent that described Nvidia’s DLSS, neural network technology could make up that power difference. And those neural networks could be running on the Switch 2, in a Switch 2 cartridge, or even piped in from the cloud.

zcomuto also confirmed that the motherboard shows a 256 GB UFS-1 chip for storage, a major upgrade in terms of storage size and speed compared to the original Switch. And they also saw evidence it will have dual channel 6 GB LPDDR5x RAM, manufactured by Micron. In this case, the images confirm that Nintendo did the upgrade from LPDDR5 to LPDDR5x that gamers wanted. Both of these, if accurate, will definitely improve the Switch 2’s performance and power.

Interestingly, zcomuto found a game card that reads Switch cards, and a separate one that reads Switch 2 cards. Nintendo already confirmed that Switch games would run on the Switch 2, and Switch Online would also carry over. Whereas in previous generations, Nintendo used to do things like pack in Game Boy Color hardware in the Game Boy Advance. This solution actually required the GBA to turn off when it was playing a GBC cart. This time, Switch and Switch 2 operating systems and software may simply run on the same hardware, but we don’t know how similar they will be.

Finally, zcomuto identified the audio chip but couldn’t confirm if it was the same one from the Hosiden shipping data. They at least confirmed it’s also made by Realtek, and if you’re reading this on a PC, it almost certainly runs on Realtek.

That’s a lot to take in for rumors that may turn out to be fake, but if they are all true and if zcomuto’s analysis is spot on, we have a better idea of what the Switch 2 will come packing once it finally comes to the market. Rather than set ourselves up for disappointment by hyping ourselves up with unchecked speculation, Nintendo fans should allow their favorite company some grace, and let them surprise all of us.