Dean Takahashi over at VentureBeat has some details on the Nintendo Switch’s internal hardware, and what it may be capable of. They’re reporting that an older generation Nvidia Tegra chip, with Maxwell Tegra architecture (as compared to the Pascal architecture) will be used, albeit a custom-made chip. VentureBeat is saying that it will be sub-PlayStation 4 in quality, but that’s for two reasons: one, Nintendo wants to replace the Wii U ASAP; two, they want to get this concept out before anyone else can. There are two potential advantages: the chip could be designed to work with more power when it’s in the dock and at lower resolution when portable.
The thing that’s worth noting is that the hardware is reportedly about the same as the Nvidia Shield TV, as has been rumored. It’s still probably the most powerful mobile-OS hardware, and can run games like Metal Gear Rising, Borderlands 2, and other late-7th-generation games in 1080p. Plus, the Nvidia Shield TV is powerful enough to process 4K transcoding for Plex Media Server. And even then, with a custom Maxwell chip and a couple years since the Shield TV first released, there’s the potential for it to be even better in terms of performance than the Shield TV. But we’ll just have to see about how Switch games compare to the PS4 and Xbox One as titles are revealed.
