[Digital Foundry/Eurogamer] What does the Switch 2 motherboard leak say about system performance? (2025)

After a one week hiatus, Digital Foundry Direct Weekly returns! The truth is, we were hoping to rest the show for a second week but the barrage of Switch 2 leaks and news put paid to our plans to more casually ease ourselves into 2025. Kicking off the show is our reaction to the reveal of a fully populated Switch 2 mainboard, photographed on both sides, at various angles. The photos are almost certainly genuine - and it's the reveal of the handheld's main processor that has caused the most controversy with confirmation that it's Samsung handling production duties based on an Nvidia design.

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Quite why this news is so important comes down to ongoing discussions since the Switch 2's T239 processor was first leaked. Renowned - and highly reliable - leaker kopite7kimi revealed way back in 2022 that Nintendo and Nvidia were developing a T239 processor for its next-gen handheld. Seemingly a cut-down version of the massive, hulking T234 used in the automotive industry, kopite7kimi believes it is fabricated on the Samsung 8nm process, as used for T234 and Nvidia's entire range of RTX 30-series consumer GPUs. At 455mm2​, T234 is just too vast and power-hungry for a handheld and yet the motherboard shots reveal that it's clearly a Samsung processor within Switch 2. If it's another 8nm chip, this has serious implications for either performance or battery life - especially when the battery compartment looks much smaller than Steam Deck's.

I'd estimate the new SoC is around 200-220mm2​ based on the size of the surrounding memory modules, believed to be in the region of 196mm2​. This is much, much higher than Steam Deck LCD's 163mm2​ and the OLED revision's 131mm2​. While some believe that Samsung 8nm is not dense enough to contain the logic in a 200-220mm2​ area, I'd beg to differ. Switch 2 apparently has 1536 Nvidia CUDA cores while Nvidia's RTX 3050 crams in 2560 of them into a 200mm2​ chip. Cut back the CUDA cores, expand the footprint of the chip and I think it is quite feasible to fit Switch 2's CPU, GPU, media and file decompression logic onto the chip we've seen leaked. That said, there are theories that another Samsung process may be in effect, perhaps 5nm. Hands-on with final hardware, we may get some idea via power consumption metrics but ultimately, the whole 8nm question will only be categorically answered when the likes of TechInsights have thoroughly analysed the product.

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Whichever way you slice it, the news of a Samsung chip does put the Switch 2 at an efficiency disadvantage up against Steam Deck and the vast array of Windows PC handhelds out there. These are based on fabrication technologies from TSMC - the most successful chip maker in the business right now. With a Samsung chip, clock speeds will be lower and power efficiency won't be as good. However, equally, I'd argue that Switch 2 has its own 'secret sauce' that none of these devices have: the power of a fixed platform.

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There's no reason why a Switch 2 with a Samsung-produced processor won't do the same throughout its lifespan, particularly as the fundamental Nvidia technologies are so good. Eight ARM A78C cores pair with Nvidia's Ampere architecture to deliver machine learning features and even ray tracing. Expect loading times to be considerably reduced owing to the inclusion of a custom file decompression block.

Another advantage Switch 2 has over its predecessor is that T239 is specifically built for the purpose at hand - even if there are challenges with the process technology, they would have been factored into the design and thoroughly tested during the simulation phase before the first chip was manufactured. Ultimately, we need to trust that Nintendo and Nvidia know what they are doing - but this is still a better place to be compared to Switch 1, where Nintendo effectively had zero input into the chip design. And let's not forget the negative reaction/outrage when we revealed the original Switch's clock speeds: 150m unit sales later, everything turned out fine.

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