Nintendo Switch 2 performance boost to fall short of Valve's Steam Deck

The Nintendo Switch is one of the best-selling consoles of all time, with the now 7-year-old console recently closing in on the unit sales of the best-selling console in the US, the PlayStation 2.

1:04:00 Nintendo Switch 2 Efficiency and Performance

With that immense popularity, it's quite safe to assume Nintendo is going to be keeping a similar design with its next-generation console, which has gained itself the placeholder name - Nintendo Switch 2. The question is how powerful the hardware will be within this console, and according to Moore's Law is Dead, a YouTube that has many industry insiders, Nintendo's focus for the Switch 2 will be improving docked performance while maintaining power efficiency in handheld mode.

According to the YouTuber, in handheld mode, the Switch 2 will run at 5 watts and feature a fanless cooling solution, and in docked mode, it will be bumped up to a range of 15 to 30 watts, depending on the load of the game. To compensate for this bump in wattage, Nintendo will introduce a cooling solution. As for raw performance, the rumored chip inside the Nintendo Switch 2 is designed with power efficiency in mind, and when compared to the Steam Deck, Moore's Law is Dead says its average FPS will be slightly lower.

The YouTube expects a game that runs at 90 FPS on the Steam Deck to run at 60FPS on the Switch 2. If a game runs at 60FPS on the Steam Deck, the YouTuber expects the Switch 2 to run at around 40FPS with VRR being used. Additionally, there will be the inclusion of NVIDIA upscaling technology such as DLSS tanks to the NVIDIA GPU. There is also the possibility of raytracing.