Report: Nintendo Switch Runs 40 Percent Slower While Undocked
According to a report, the Nintendo Switch is going to run 40% slower while it’s undocked. With great mobility comes great cost, it appears. As someone who both wants a Switch and doesn’t mobile game at all, this doesn’t bother me. But I imagine it may bum some folk out?
The Nintendo Switch may allow players to both take it on the go and hook it up to the TV, but Digital Foundry reports that those looking to get the most out of the upcoming console should consider leaving it in its dock.
Citing several unnamed sources, the the tech-focused imprint at Eurogamer suggests that the undocked Nintendo Switch hits clock speeds 40 percent lower than those the system is capable of when connected to the dock. While the available CPU and memory controller speeds remain the same regardless of configuration, Digital Foundry’s sources say that GPU speeds change drastically between the two modes.
No matter which way players use the Nintendo Switch, the system may not reach the full potential of its Nvidia chip. The console reportedly uses some variation of the Tegra X1, the power of which we assessed in detail earlier this year. (Nvidia later confirmed that the Switch would use a “custom Tegra processor.”) While the X1 chip is capable of 1 GHZ speeds — as seen in the company’s Shield tablet — the Nintendo Switch will only ever hit 768 MHz at best, according to Digital Foundry. That’s less powerful than the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which should come as no surprise to those following Switch rumors over the past year.
Although the hardware profiles differ between Nintendo Switch’s two configurations, sources suggest that developers can choose to rein their games in as to keep gameplay and graphics consistent whether the console is docked or not. That may mean that Nintendo Switch games may not always live up to their full potential when it comes to performance.