Nintendo Switch Final Hardware Specs

Nintendo has finally revealed their most anticipated console, The Nintendo Switch. Check out the final specifications.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Not really final, considering we haven't gotten a tear-down of the specs' capabilities to see what kind of Tegra it is or how the rest of the performance will work out.
Not much longer till we find out, thankfully.

[mikeslemonade]

Anybody just cares about what kind of Nvidia Tegra specifically and how they customized it.

[DARKKENT]

Specs will be fully revealed soon and expect an influx of comparisons with the old hardware of ps4 and xb1 due to the fact Nintendo have purposely hidden what everyone wants to know

If its not as powerful as those two consoles or just as powerful Nintendo should be ashamed of themselves at the price of this console

My opinion

[freshslicepizza]

nintendo will never release the real specs people want to know about. i imagine inside they have purposely hidden any markings on the chips.

[WickedLester]

@Darkkent

Nonsense! The Switch is a hand held device and you simply cannot compare it to PS4 and X1. Mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, phones, etc are simply on a different tech path than non mobile devices because anytime you shrink tech down, it becomes more expensive. Not to mention the crazy drain on battery life it would have if made it as powerful as PS4/X1. It would be like criticizing the Vita for being less powerful than the PS3 and X360.

[indysurfn]

Why do people keep arguing that it is not a console?

So you people actually believe Nintendo has NO CONSOLE and TWO HANDHELDS FIGHTING against each other?

For NO reason?

They killed the last console but NOT the last handheld!

So right now there is NO console(until March 3rd), and you are suggesting that come March 3rd Nintendo will release a second HANDHELD but NO console? So that can fight each other! REALLY!? You believe that?

Incredible.....And arrogant because you are telling them what there own machine is!

@Prince-Ali how about you prove it is a handheld? Nintendo have SEVERAL TIMES including there reveal announced it is a console. Just watch it.

[abstractel]

I think it's pretty obvious how (not so) powerful the GPU is. The quality is way below PS4/XB1.

If it had been a PS4/XB1 equivalent in terms of power, I would have been interested in it. Used to love my NES and SNES, N64 and to some degree the Gamecube other than the latter two didn't support standard mediums when at the time the Playstation did.

These days I'll take Horizon Zero Dawn over Zelda any day.

Nintendo is a used car dealership IMO. 3rd party support will drop quickly. The fact that they are releasing Rayman Legends is a bit ridiculous considering how long it's been available on consoles.

I would _love_ a powerful Nintendo console because I do still love their IPs.

[0Day]

@WickedLester

You're brain is off... please power it on. Nintendo has said time and time again, Switch is a home console first. They should atleast be on par with 2013 home console specs.

[WickedLester]

Wow. Ironic that you would tell me to turn my brain on. Who gives a shit what Nintendo SAYS?!? That's just PR bullshit. All you have to do is look at the damn thing and the architecture that's gone into it and anyone with a brain can see for themselves it's a mobile device. It's a tablet with detachable controllers! Just because "home console" is what Nintendo is calling it doesn't automatically make it so. That's just the way they want to spin it for marketing purposes because they want to try and differentiate it from the 3DS to justify keeping them both on the market for as long as possible to maximize sales. The architecture and design dictates what the system is, not what Nintendo says it is. If you honestly believe it's a console because Nintendo said it is, then you're a mindless automaton.

[hiawa23]

The Switch is clearly a portable that docks. I agree with wickedLester. Nintendo can say what eva they like. What else are they going to say? From everything I have seen about this portable that docks, which is not even on par with the 2013 consoles we got from either Sony and MS, spec wise, don't even mention the Pro or Scorpio. I am hoping the Switch does well, for Nintendo as the gaming community is better when all three console makers have good hardware on the market. I don't plan on buying a Switch but I hope it does well. We will see how well it is received from third party devs whether or not it gets the same big budgeted games as Sony and MS gets. The Switch can't just be a Nintendo machine.

[CrimsonWing69]

not trying to start anything but what is it that you believe this system will be capable of performing? It's already been announced by several devs that they aren't sure if it can run some current gen games... so I mean what is it that you keep grasping onto that you think this will be a capable console to hold up with the PS4 and Xbone?

[Sevir]

The system launched in less than a month... It's as final as it'll get if there's any kind of boost to performance it will be software optimization.

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

No one knows the specs. Other than the developers.

Why? Because it a custom made chip by Nvidia.

[rdgneoz3]

And the chips for the PS4 and xbone are over the counter, no modification chips? They're all semi-custom, and the specs will come out soon enough for the Switch.

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

No. The chip in Switch custom made from ground up with the Switch. Nvidia said themselves.

[fenome]

Otaku it's the same with the AMD chips in the PS4 and X1, they're all customized specifically for the consoles. Once it gets out in the wild people will crack it open and analyze its guts, it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME a device gets released.

[DeadlyFire]

Technically you can figure them out with upclose pics of the internal guts of the chips with some trained eyes. Honestly though to be a portable with 1 Tflop is pretty decent. GPU should be comeparable to XB1.

[MrSec84]

No you would need a professional die scan of the SOC to observe what components make up Switch's main processor, with standard zoomed in pictures you'll be seeing nothing of note.
Tbh though you can make pretty accurate performance estimates by knowing what the level of power consumption is in each mode, NVidia's current technical capabilities on the node in use and form factor of the target device.

Switch certainly isn't a teraflop level device using NVidia's calculations, at best it could be around 700gflop when docked (if clock speeds boost as DF believes), though that would be using Pascal and it doesn't seem the node changes happened to allow for that, so it's more likely around 350gflop when docked, half that when in portable mode.

Flops aren't the best metric to gauge performance because they don't tell you how much data each operation per second is made up of and only the architectural features of the device can tell you that.
Looking at Digital Foundry's clock speeds, going by Maxwell performance at those clocks Switch is about half as capable as XB1 when docked, a quarter when portable, though Fast RMX may elude to things being a little bit better than that when compared to how Fast Neo runs on Wii U when looking at the most demanding multiplayer mode, although both versions of the game use a similar temporal scaling technique when the hardware is under load, so it's still hard to fet an accurate measure for what Switch is really capable of.

RMX in best case scenarios runs at 2x the frame rate of Neo, in 4 player local MP mode, with 2.25X the resolution, with an unknown number of graphical improvements over the Wii U game, but there's no way of knowing exactly what that resolution is under heavy load or what effects improvements are in play with accurate analysis.

We're stuck without being able to definitively say where Switch really sits, but even Pascal tech wouldn't allow Switch to house an XB1 level gpu in it's case.

[yeahokwhatever]

MrSec is spot on. You have to look at power consumption and current technology, you can then get a pretty good idea of where it sits. I think his numbers are also pretty much what to expect.

[WickedLester]

It's not that powerful. Judging from what I've seen so far, I would consider this device a "Wii U Plus" in terms of performance, only in mobile form, probably coming in around 750-800 gigaflops or so with 4GB of RAM

[Wallstreet37]

Lol some of you make me laugh. Do you not know that all the new consoles have customized chips? Please stop with the excuses. Ps4 has customized chips and did they hide the specs? No they did the complete oppossite and made presentations on the ps4 customized gpu, cpu and specs lol

Deadlyfire....

And smh at the ppl still hoping its comparable to even an xbone lol Switch is not 1 teraflop stop spreading nonsense.

[Angeljuice]

No it's a modified Tegra chip. The chip itself is a standard Tegra but with customisations specific to Switch.

"No. The chip in Switch custom made from ground up with the Switch. Nvidia said themselves."

But it's based on a Tegra, so we know for a fact that isn't true (just PR talk).

[Phunkydiabetic1]

No, no one knows the final specs because they are pathetic and Nintendo doesn't want anyone to know.

[captainexplosion]

It's only capable of 5.1 surround sound?

[nitus10]

To be fair 5.1 sound is still pretty acceptable especially if you have a good 5.1 sound system.

Granted that the PS3, XBox360, PS4 and XB1 can support 7.1 sound most people will still be quite happy with 5.1 audio. I would even go as far as saying that many people would be ok with 2.1 or even 2.0 sound (stereo).

[andrewsquall]

That is just another widespread 360 misconception, it actually never did 7.1 surround sound. Its simply another awesome late "PS3 standard" of the Xbone. In fact, 5.1 really ISN'T acceptable in 2017 when PS3 did it in 2006.

[Kribwalker]

I wouldn't be ok with 2.1, but 5.1 is ok

[modelgod]

If you own a Nintendo console post Game Cube then you'll be satisfied with 2.0-2.1. However, as a X1 owner, I cant imagine going less than 7.1.

[MyDietEqualsGames]

Accetable for the accepting, maybe.

[Sm3000]

I was just reading about surround sound, and media only officially supports 5.1 anyway.

[AlexAdelaide]

I'm pretty sure the headphone jack supports microphone input as well as output, and that of the 3 USB ports, only 1 will become USB 3. This is a crappy clickbait article with no new information. What's there isn't even accurate.

[Thunder_G0d_Bane]

The headphone jack does support headset, says so on Nintnedos website spec sheet.

[ziggurcat]

What about the GPU? CPU?

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

Like I said no one knows it but developers.

[KTF26]

Custom Tegra chip
tearing down the Switch won't be enough to find out what's really inside it
Digital Foundry say it's custom Tegra X1 and they got it from leaked development guide

[cellmember]

Information from df is still based on an early dev kit. Dev kits were reportedly updated since then so we'll have to wait longer to find out more about the chip.

[MyDietEqualsGames]

Gonna need hotchips

[bf000777966]

they don't want to reveal it lest their share price will slump again.

[bf000777966]

I thought you can only get a 720p display in an antique store.

[yeahokwhatever]

That's where you'll find most Nintendo's, so I mean, it makes sense.

[Nintentional]

Is that why the Vita is 540p?

[I-wear-clothes]

Kinda sucks that we have to wait untill digital foundry gets their hands on it to find out exactly how powerful it is.

[Gemmol]

Even when they do its all assumptions because it's customize, we would have to hope Nvidia release the info

[FallenAngel1984]

Still no Ethernet cuz Nintendo loves continuing to nickel and dime its consumers for as long as possible

[Aquietguy]

Ethernet would do you no good undocked. I guess that's what Nintdendo eas thinking.

[jmc8888]

Why does that matter? It's supposed to be a 'console' right? Well, consoles have ethernet.

But not Nintendo.

Wii U didn't have ethernet either. It's a Nintendo thing. To get you to buy a $30 cable.

Seriously, and if you buy 3rd party, it doesn't work. Seriously.

[Aquietguy]

jmc888

Do handhelds have etthernet? They could put one in the dock but what happens when undocked? I think Nintendo is going for an easier transition between docked and undocked.

[Athos]

You're right, obviously nobody else does it. So lets see, PS4 Pro, bigger hard drive, $60 online subscription, headset, constant remasters... i could go on, but you're right, only Nintendo keeps milking its customer base.

[Angeljuice]

Not quite the same is it. The PS4 ships as a complete console with everything you need to get started.
Switch has some of what makes the console work missing when you buy it.

The PS4 has at least a 500gb hard drive to begin with and if you choose to upgrade it, as it's just a standard hard drive, you don't give any money to Sony.

Sony tend to use industry standard connectors and ports (which leaves you open to using non-Sony alternatives should you wish). Nintendo and Microsoft tend to use unique connectors that lock you in to buying their overpriced products (I'm not sure but I believe Microsoft have improved in this respect lately).

Nintendo is far more adept at milking it's fans than Sony.

[FallenAngel1984]

@ Aquiet

There's no excuse for there not being an Ethernet port on the dock, especially when the dock is being sold at a premium $90.

@ Toshi

Words can't even describe how horrible your comparison is.

[Athos]

@ Angeljuice

I think the only thing missing is an SD card. Other than that I can take it out of the box and play games. Correct me if I am wrong.

[stuna1]

You forgot the game! PS4 and Xbox 1 come with packed in games, the Switch as we know as of now doesn't.

[joab777]

How is it they couldn't just offer like a 256 FB model? My iPhone 7+ is 256gb.

[blawren4]

For $299? Why can't you just buy a 256 gb sd card? It would be cheaper than what the price of the switch would have to be to accommodate this totally unnecessary level of storage. All digital download is your choice.

[Segata]

Ad costs more than 600 dollars.

[AcidDvl]

My tablet has a bigger battery than the Switch...

[Gemmol]

Yeah so what, the switch use unreal for console while your tablet use unreal for mobile phones, I can play console games while you can only play down grade mobile games and with my portable charger I can play for 12 hours before I need to charge up my portable charger or switch

[AcidDvl]

What are you trying to achieve with this rant? Trying to justify your future purchase?

Speaking of dumb down games, your version of FIFA and NBA are dumb downed versions of the PS3 version LMAO

[gedden7]

You won't know the specs until you see more games. Its a heavily custom chip at much lower power level. The way the games look and preform is how you will know the specs. This is Nintendo we are talking about.

[Einhander1971]

I don't really give a shit about specs give me the games

[superchiller]

Well you might want to start "giving a shit about specs", because if they're mediocre like so many past Nintendo consoles, you're not going to get many games at all. Stop making excuses and demand better products from Nintendo, otherwise you're just hastening their failure.

[superchiller]

@ fleece - How'd all that work out for the Wii U? It "worked fine" but was so weak in terms of specs and features, it ended up not being able to run current generation games. You should start caring about "GPU and CPU or whatever silly schitt we're talking about today" because, if those components are weak by current generation standards, the games are not going to be on Nintendo's platforms. And without robust 3rd party support, the system will fail. Simple as that.

"it's not like they put out a product that's bad."

Actually, that's exactly what Nintendo did with the Wii U: put out a bad product. It was very poorly designed, and ended up being completely unable to run current generation games. So it was in fact a poor product.

[hiawa23]

If it is all about the games why did the Wiiu fail, because I bought my daughter every Nintendo exclusive for it, before she got bored and wanted a Playstation and Xbox. If it is about the games the Wiiu has all the Nintendo franchises, and it still failed, so it must be about more than just games.

[Angeljuice]

"I don't really give a shit about specs give me the games"
Stick with the WiiU then (or GameCube).

[Sirk7x]

To be fair I played about 25 hours worth of Gamecube in the last week xD

[objdadon]

Well having good enough specs for developers to port to or use leads to games so......

[blawren4]

I would never reveal the full specs at any point if I were nintendo or Nvidia. It's like never showing your cards after everyone folded in Poker. Just don't do it. Let the games speak for themselves. There is nothing good that could come out of releasing this. People don't generally understand what they mean anyway. People can't grasp that cart based games don't require installs and 32gb can easily be compared to a 500gb HD system, and continue to focus on this as something of substance.

[superchiller]

Why do you always have to make excuses for Nintendo's mediocre products? As a dedicated fan, you should be insisting on better designed gaming hardware from them, otherwise they are simply going to fail. Is that what you want?

[blawren4]

Simply because I don't believe them to be mediocre. Each system has their own benefits/weaknesses, and unfortunately, most don't understand, choose to ignore, or oversimplify the details in an effort to make one sided comparisons. I don't compare consoles or judge them on what other consoles are doing, so I simply take each separately for what they are, not what they aren't. It's called being fair. The Switch looks like a quality system.

I've never seen you on here providing any constructive criticism to Nintendo, just spouting off about gimimcky this, weak that, missing features, etc. You aren't helping anyone with your tone and comments, despite you thinking that you are doing Nintendo a service by being critical. In fact, I've never seen you do anything in support of any console. Do you even game, or is this all you do? You aren't just moving the goal posts regularly, you are cutting it down and hiding it from view so that no one can enjoy themselves.

[Athos]

Because the average consumer plays games, not spec's. You wont find them on here arguing about sales figures either.

Edit: Also PS2, every game boy product ever, Wii and more sold more than their competition and weren't the most powerful. Its about games, not spec's.

[Angeljuice]

Sometimes you show your cards in Poker after everyone folds. You can do it to convince someone you play cards a certain way (loose or by the book), when it was really just an outlier.

[modelgod]

@WickedLester ABSOLUTELY!

[DualWielding]

#nintendoomed

[josephayal]

This is very sad, I'll wait for the inevitable price drop, maybe a $150 full bundle with 5 games

[hiawa23]

The Wiiu is not $150 and it is in the grave so you are expecting the Switch to drop to that? You are going to be waiting for a long time. I don't see that happening.

[badz149]

I think he was expecting the Switch to fail as well

[josephayal]

nintendo meh!

[CitizenFour]

At first glance, this is not a console that I would spend money on...

[Einhander1971]

Like I said I don't give a shit about specs as long as I can play the select Nintendo titles
I have ps4 as well for all the other titles I need. So I'm not worried don't intend to worry obviously you are.

[badz149]

That's exactly the attitude that will spell the downfall of the Switch just like what happened with the Wii U. Nintendo alone is incapable to provide a constant stream of exclusives to keep people playing. They will inevitably lose because even nintendo fans aren't willing to spend on 3rd parties on Nintendo's console.

[Sirk7x]

I think it depends on how well it sells. If it sells great and has good software purchases, I'd imagine a gradual easing out of 3DS support, or releasing games on both systems. The 3DS obviously can't run AAA console multiplat games, but still has plenty of 1st and 3rd part support. It also was overpriced and sold poorly at first as well until a price drop. If consumers want the product, and spend money on games for it, developers will want to make games for the platform.

[Einhander1971]

How many times do you lot have to get it through your heads that Nintendo aren't in the GPU, CPU
arms race like Sony, Microsoft, they do there own thing deal with it. Stop complaining don't buy it
Know ones forcing you certainly not me.

[KnightNumber86]

You almost had me there...

[Amongunz]

DARKKENT

"If its not as powerful as those two consoles or just as powerful Nintendo should be ashamed of themselves at the price of this console"

That makes no sense - neither PS$ or xbox one can fit in your hand... GAMES GAMES GAMES.. all that matters.

[Angeljuice]

"GAMES GAMES GAMES.. all that matters"
If that were true, nobody would buy a Switch for 6 months. I don't know if you've noticed or not but the games are few and far between.

[Amongunz]

1 word. Zelda. Gotta sell machines to sell games. Stop hating to hate. Lets see how this plays out and hope the games come... until then.. go put on your ps4 vr headset and fanboy out.

[badz149]

@Amongunz

You're the bigger fanboy here. You really think Zelda alone will be enough? That's exactly the level of arrogance that will setup the Switch for another early demise like its predecessor.

[masso9112]

I just want to know what the Nvidia chip is comparable to, just to have an idea of what the console could do.

[Subzero100x]

ok where is the rest of the specs?

[superchiller]

Nintendo is too afraid to reveal the detailed specs, because they know that people will laugh at them.

[bluefox755]

So...they revealed nothing? No clock speeds? No cores? No memory?
Well at least they gave us a frame of reference. Zelda BOTW runs @ 720p/30fps on the Wii U, and 900p/30fps on the Switch. So we know it's a small step up from the Wii U.

[Angeljuice]

On the docked Switch at least, it's still 720p/30fps on the handheld version (the 720p screen dictates that).

[Athos]

So lets see if I have this right...

1) Power doesnt matter unless its Nintendo. It makes no difference on PS4P vs. Scorpio... check
2) Resolution only matters when its Nintendo or MS, but checkerboarding is OK.... check.

[Wrex369]

It's funny seeing these comments because last time I checked none of those other consoles can play Zelda on the toilet, or on a car drive. Or on a plane 🤔

[superchiller]

Who cares? Zelda isn't all that, most people couldn't care less about it.

[Sirk7x]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
6 Zelda games on this list. Like it or not, they have widely been considered some of the greatest and most innovative video games ever created.

[captainexplosion]

Zelda isn't nearly as popular as hardcore gamers and fanboys think it is. It isn't even a top five Nintendo franchise. Mario Kart, Pokemon, Smash, Mario, and Animal Crossing are all much bigger sellers. You could probably even put Wii Sports and Splatoon ahead of them. I really wanted a Switch until the reveal. Under powered and no games I care about until Splatoon 2 more than five months after it launches. Really wish there were some Mario port at launch.

[troll_king]

Click bait nothing new here, apparently it's got zero ram which might hinder it a tad

[pleasuretokill]

Yeah. Now give us the detailed specs. ROPs, Shaders, Teraflops, clock speeds ect. We want the HORSEPOWER information!

[PGRfox]

This article is crap and contains old information that everyone already new. Misleading title/clickbait.

[jholden3249]

Meh, I don't need to know the nitty gritty. I can just look at games and tell, ya that looks fine. Games look good.

Not competing for most powerful console, but it's good enough the games look fine. Especially as a handheld.

[hiawa23]

I was hoping the Switch would be a traditional console with specs in between the X1 PS4 & PRO Scorpio, so they lost me, but I am hoping the Switch does well for Nintendo. It has to do better than the Wiiu, which had all the Nintendo big franchises it still failed, so those saying it is only about the games, well, that may not be 100% true. If memory serves me the Wii also ran out of gas. Many people bought it, but did not play it.

[SR388]

3 weeks and we will all know what it's true power is but who cares lol

[DaGamingKing]

Not final, it still says Custom Tegra Chip.

[Sm3000]

Final specs huh. So I take it it has no RAM then?