With the Nintendo Swap 2 Direct creeping up on us together with the rumoured June launch window, rumours in regards to the improvement package for the brand new console have began popping up. A current hearsay revolves across the Swap 2’s speculated assist for 4K output. Builders have seemingly revealed that the devkit for the Swap 2 doesn’t have assist for 4K.
In a current episode of the Insider Gaming Weekly podcast, Tom Henderson has mentioned that builders throughout GDC 2025 advised him in regards to the capabilities of the devkits. In these dialog, one developer revealed the dearth of 4K output.
“I heard this from one developer at GDC and likewise heard it individually in an e-mail, however the dev kits, or a few of the dev kits, don’t have a 4K output,” mentioned Henderson within the podcast.
Whereas the dearth of 4K output for a improvement package isn’t too large of a deal within the grand scheme of issues, it does point out that the Swap 2 gained’t have the ability to run at such a excessive decision natively. Slightly, the console will possible make use of some type of AI-based picture upscaling within the vein of Nvidia’s DLSS.
This rumoured expertise was first noticed again in January due to a patent software. In accordance with this, the Swap 2 will characteristic separate inside {hardware} to run a neural internet. This chip, developed by Nvidia, is anticipated to be able to having the ability to upscale photographs from 540p to 1080p, for example.
One of many makes use of of this upscaling expertise seemingly revolves round lowering a recreation’s general measurement. By this, Nintendo may have the sport take up much less area on the {hardware} for the reason that console gained’t want high-resolution textures that are usually huge in storage phrases, as a substitute counting on picture upscaling expertise.
An instance given for this software of the upscaling expertise was that, the place a recreation with 4K textures packaged into it’d weigh in at round 60 GB, a recreation that includes texture sizes extra suited to 1080p gaming may have a smaller footprint of round 20 GB. The AI-based upscaler can then be used to output the 1080p model’s textures all the best way as much as 4K. This may additionally permit video games to suit within Nintendo’s Swap Carts, which generally have a storage capability of as much as 32 GB.
Different rumours from again in January gave us a sign of what sort of horsepower we will count on from the Swap 2. In accordance with these rumours, the GPU on the Swap 2 will clock in at 561 MHz whereas the console is in handheld mode, translating to round 1.71 TFLOPS (trillion floating level operations per second). Docking the Swap 2 will give it a substantial enhance, clocking up at 1,000 MHz, coming in at round 3.1 TFLOPS.
The Nintendo Swap 2 is rumoured to be operating on an Nvidia Tegra 239 SoC (system on chip). Whereas not fairly as sturdy because the {hardware} we see in current-gen consoles, not to mention fashionable PCs, the {hardware} will nonetheless find yourself being a substantial improve over the unique Swap.
