YouTuber Geekerwan has managed to get hold of a Nintendo Switch 2 motherboard. He claims he nabbed the component for about $150 on a Chinese eBay-like website called Xianyu.
While the creator won’t be able to do much with the hardware, since it is just a board with some circuits and chips, he did manage to do a thorough investigation on the board to discover exactly what we’re in for when it comes to the performance of the upcoming console.
Geekerwan says the Nintendo Switch 2 motherboard is obviously larger than the original Switch. He reveals that Nintendo has made a number of changes to the board. First off, the Switch 2 game card slot is not fully integrated onto the board and is no longer attached with a ribbon cable.
The Switch 2 motherboard is also not as densely packed as the original with fewer components and more space between them. The CPU and RAM have been built closely together. It includes 2 x 6GB Hynix 128-bit LPDDR5X RAM.
The board also includes a MediaTek MT3681AEN Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, Realtek ALC5658 audio chip, and two PMIC DAC9092 conductors. These conductors output 17.2W of power each, making the Switch 2’s SOC run at a max of 34.4W.
The board Geekerwan managed to get was manufactured in the 36th week of 2024 and includes the NVIDIA GML X30-A1. This is a 207mm die, which makes it double the size of the NVIDIA Tegra X1 found in the original Switch console.
Geekerwan says this NVIDIA SOC is roughly the same size as an RTX 3050 Ti GPU and bigger than the Snapdragon X Elite chip.
The YouTuber goes on to try and recreate a Switch 2 performance scenario, knowing what is inside the NVIDIA SOC. While the tests and scores don’t exactly represent what we’ll get in the actual Switch 2, the results sort of put the chip ahead of the Steam Deck and PS4.
Of course, there are factors you can’t exactly test without the Switch 2 being functional. DLSS is one of these, but this early look at the components at least gives us some idea of what to expect.
The video, which you can watch below, dives into some actual gameplay scenarios too. One of which is showcasing Cyberpunk 2077 in the settings we can expect on the Switch 2. Watch it all below.
