This Is How the Nintendo Switch 2 May Achieve 4K

The starting weapon for 2025 besides marked the footrace toward the Nintendo Switch 2, which has entered its last thigh sprint. Leaks of the Switch 2’s motherboard, combined with a precocious revealed patent, connection a hint of the handheld’s powerfulness and amusement america however it whitethorn yet deed the fabled 4K resolutions without maxing retired your hard thrust space.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has agelong been earmarked for a new, peculiar Nvidia chip. This was supposedly the T234—though modified to acceptable the smaller Nintendo chassis—and renamed to T239. Based connected these rumors, spot aficionados speculated this would beryllium equivalent successful powerfulness to the PlayStation 4 procreation of consoles.

Images posted to Reddit Wednesday amusement what could beryllium the motherboard for Nintendo’s upcoming console, including the CPU socket, maybe. The spot doesn’t notation immoderate naming for the T239, but the SOC could usage a antithetic serial fig oregon codename.

The archetypal Switch was based connected the Nvidia Tegra X1 SOC. Even for its time, backmost successful 2017, the console felt retired of day successful presumption of graphical performance. Thanks to its versatility and portability, it has go 1 of the astir fashionable gaming devices. Still, erstwhile docked and connected to a TV, the console would lone output successful 720p successful handheld mode and a max of 1080p. To execute 4K, the Switch sequel would request to beryllium capable to output a solution 4 times that of the archetypal Switch.

If you retrieve your console history, the archetypal PlayStation 4 did not enactment 4K. It wasn’t until the PS4 Pro arrived successful 2016 that we saw enactment for higher resolutions. We don’t cognize capable astir Switch 2’s spot to cognize however good it performs astatine higher resolutions. However, a patent filed by Nintendo past twelvemonth proposes a solution successful the signifier of AI upscaling.

Nintendo filed the patent for “Systems and methods for instrumentality learning representation conversion” successful July 2023, though the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published the papers connected Dec. 31, 2024. The insubstantial describes a strategy for converting images with AI to upscale them to a higher resolution. Upscaling is now prolific among PC games, with companies specified arsenic Nvidia DLSS (the institution may reveal DLSS 4 this month), AMD, and Intel offering antithetic varieties of upscaling tech.

AI upscaling is making its mode to consoles. The PS5 Pro offers its own blend of upscaling, dubbed PlayStation spectral super-resolution, oregon PSRR. The tech converts each framework played astatine a little solution to a higher resolution, letting you support the show of the archetypal image.

Game journalist Laura Kate noted this connected Bluesky. The patent references allowing them to acceptable games connected “smaller capableness carnal media.” If you tin get 4K retired of your portable console without maxing retired constricted thrust space, Nintendo—and I, for that matter—would telephone that a win. Kate noted that the patent notes upscaling from 520p to 1080p and 1080p to 4K.

Nintendo’s archetypal 8-inch handheld whitethorn so beryllium much almighty than the 2017 rendition, but Nintendo has confirmed it volition besides be backward compatible to immoderate extent. That means it volition request to enactment with cartridges. The leaked motherboard for the Switch 2 shows it includes a USB-C larboard and a slot for Nintendo’s slim carnal media. That poses a occupation erstwhile the information connected the cartridge is limited. It’s wherefore adjacent erstwhile you bargain a disc for a crippled nowadays, you inactive request to download tens oregon hundreds much gigabytes of information not included connected the disc.

The bequest Japanese console shaper previously said it plans to uncover the Switch 2 earlier the extremity of its fiscal year, which ends successful March. We’re crossing our fingers for a January reveal, but if each these leaks are real, it shows that Nintendo is already good into full-scale production.