Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang — oh man, this is classic — he’s super stoked about this new chip in the Nintendo Switch 2. It’s like he’s saying, “Guys, look! It’s got everything. Performance. Smarts. Even some kind of beauty.” That whole power-in-your-hand shtick, you know? Launch date’s June 5, in case you’re marking your calendars, and this comes straight from a… drumroll… “special edition” Creator’s Voice video from Nintendo. These tech specs chats? Rare as a unicorn, seriously.
So, Jensen is in this video, yep, gushing about the chip. The whole spiel is, it’s got the most advanced graphics on any mobile device, full-on ray tracing (which I guess means cooler shadows?), and something about backward compatibility, whatever that means in this context. Anyway—wait—it’s substantial because even Nintendo’s developers are nodding their heads about using DLSS. Nvidia didn’t over-explain the chip in their blog (thank goodness), but they did throw around terms like RT cores. Something about it giving 10 times the graphics power of its older sibling, the Switch. Oh, and the AI processors in this gizmo? They’re there to “enhance gameplay” real-time. Not entirely sure what that entails, but sounds fancy.
May brought us deets from Digital Foundry — bless them — eight ARM Cortex A78C cores buzzing away with some ARMv8 64-bit sorcery, plus a GPU from Nvidia’s Ampere line. Old yet new, I guess? Memory enthusiasts, prepare for 12GB across two LPDDR5X modules, zipping along a neat little 128-bit path. You’re drooling, right? Who can forget that 256GB UFS storage?! Also, a microSD slot welcoming a chonky 2TB card. More room for games, yay us!
Part of the video dives into Nvidia’s role in the OG Switch and a tribute to Satoru Iwata, a leading dude at Nintendo. He didn’t get to see the first Switch’s release, sadly, but his fingerprints are all over it.
This new and shiny Switch 2 costs $449.99 (launches Thursday). Want a Mario Kart World bundle? That’ll set you back $499.99 (but better hurry, it’s for a limited time). Pre-orders? Gone in a flash, though stores might have a few on launch day. Fingers crossed.
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