After a one week hiatus, Digital Foundry Direct Weekly returns! The truth is, we were hoping to rest the show for a second week but the barrage of Switch 2 leaks and news put paid to our plans to more casually ease ourselves into 2025. Kicking off the show is our reaction to the reveal of a fully populated Switch 2 mainboard, photographed on both sides, at various angles. The photos are almost certainly genuine – and it’s the reveal of the handheld’s main processor that has caused the most controversy with confirmation that it’s Samsung handling production duties based on an Nvidia design.
Quite why this news is so important comes down to ongoing discussions since the Switch 2’s T239 processor was first leaked. Renowned – and highly reliable – leaker kopite7kimi revealed way back in 2022 that Nintendo and Nvidia were developing a T239 processor for its next-gen handheld. Seemingly a cut-down version of the massive, hulking T234 used in the automotive industry, kopite7kimi believes it is fabricated on the Samsung 8nm process, as used for T234 and Nvidia’s entire range of RTX 30-series consumer GPUs. At 455mm2, T234 is just too vast and power-hungry for a handheld and yet the motherboard shots reveal that it’s clearly a Samsung processor within Switch 2. If it’s another 8nm chip, this has serious implications for either performance or battery life – especially when the battery compartment looks much smaller than Steam Deck’s.
I’d estimate the new SoC is around 200-220mm2 based on the size of the surrounding memory modules, believed to be in the region of 196mm2. This is much, much higher than Steam Deck LCD’s 163mm2 and the OLED revision’s 131mm2. While some believe that Samsung 8nm is not dense enough to contain the logic in a 200-220mm2 area, I’d beg to differ. Switch 2 apparently has 1536 Nvidia CUDA cores while Nvidia’s RTX 3050 crams in 2560 of them into a 200mm2 chip. Cut back the CUDA cores, expand the footprint of the chip and I think it is quite feasible to fit Switch 2’s CPU, GPU, media and file decompression logic onto the chip we’ve seen leaked. That said, there are theories that Samsung process may be in effect, perhaps 5nm. Hands-on with final hardware, we may get some idea via power consumption metrics but ultimately, the whole 8nm question will only be categorically answered when the likes of TechInsights have thoroughly analysed the product.
0:00:00 Introduction0:00:50 News 1: Switch 2 motherboard leaks – with possible 8nm SoC0:27:47 News 2: Nintendo patent hints at Switch 2 upscaling0:43:45 News 3: High quality GTA 6 trailer reveals new details0:55:35 News 4: Wukong developer says Series S holding back Xbox port1:07:41 News 5: AI update – new GPTs, game tech1:19:38 Supporter Q1: Does it make sense to pair an AMD CPU with an Intel GPU for a budget build?1:26:02 Supporter Q2: Will Sony ship games like Marvel’s Spider-Man on Switch 2?1:31:23 Supporter Q3: Are you saving some performance-challenged Switch games for Switch 2?1:35:26 Supporter Q4: Is this the most exciting Q1 in gaming history?
Whichever way you slice it, the news of a Samsung chip does put the Switch 2 at an efficiency disadvantage up against Steam Deck and the vast array of Windows PC handhelds out there. These are based on fabrication technologies from TSMC – the most successful chip maker in the business right now. With a Samsung chip, clock speeds will be lower and power efficiency won’t be as good. However, equally, I’d argue that Switch 2 has its own ‘secret sauce’ that none of these devices have: the power of a fixed platform.