Virtuos’s Eoin O’Grady made some bold claims about the Nintendo Switch 2’s performance. According to him, the Nintendo Switch 2 has similar raw performance to the Xbox Series S in handheld mode. But it’s a different story when NVIDIA’s DLSS tech is taken into consideration.
In an interview with WCCFtech, Eoin O’Grady, Technical Director at Black Shamrock (a subsidiary of Virtuos), shed some light on the Switch 2’s performance and compared it to the Xbox Series S and PS4. According to him, the Switch 2 performs slightly below the Series S in handheld mode.
However, thanks to the Switch 2’s Tegra T239 SoC with 46 Ampere Tensor Cores, which also offers custom DLSS upscaling for sharper image quality and better performance, that might be an easy performance gap to overcome. In O’Grady’s own words:
“GPU-wise, the Switch 2 performs slightly below the Series S; this difference is more noticeable in handheld mode. However, the Series S does not support technologies like DLSS, which the Switch 2 does. This makes the GPU capabilities of the two consoles comparable overall.”
On the CPU front, the Switch 2 is comparable to the PS4, with an octa-core ARM Cortex-A78C CPU that’s a tad more powerful than the latter’s octa-core AMD Jaguar x86-64 CPU.
While this seems like a limitation due to the Switch 2’s less powerful ARM CPU, O’Grady pointed out that most modern games are GPU-dependent, especially if they’re properly optimized. So, it stands to reason that any 60 FPS game on the Series S can easily be ported over to the Nintendo Switch 2. The only caveat seems to be CPU-intensive titles, which can still be ported over with additional optimization. O’Grady further added:
“Any game shipping at 60 FPS on the Series S should easily port to the Switch 2. Likewise, a 30 FPS Series S game that’s GPU-bound should also port well. Games with complex physics, animations, or other CPU-intensive elements might incur additional challenges in reaching 30 or 60 FPS or require extra optimization during porting.”
The Nintendo Switch 2 has already seen some impressive ports that have proven its technical capabilities. The Switch 2’s Street Fighter 6 port manages not only to rival the Xbox Series S in terms of performance, but also offers higher texture and image quality. Moreover, CD Projekt RED’s Switch 2 port of its graphically intensive title, Cyberpunk 2077, runs at a solid 30 FPS in Quality mode and 40 FPS in Performance mode.
I am a UAE-based tech writer who likes to build and benchmark PCs both professionally and as a hobby. I contribute to multiple tech publications, including TechRadar and NotebookCheck, as well as Game Rant, where I focus primarily on news, commerce, and buying guides. When I’m not scouring the internet for the latest in tech stories, you will find me playing a game of Civilization or DotA with friends and frenemies alike while dropping recommendations for Apple TV+’s Foundation to everyone I come across.
