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Nintendo Confirms Switch 2 Uses DLSS and Ray Tracing, but Is Being Super Vague About the Details - IGN

Nintendo has confirmed the Switch 2 uses DLSS and ray tracing technology, but has yet to go into detail on how exactly, or show them off. And as for the GPU, Nintendo would prefer to focus on "the value that we can provide to our consumers."

www.ign.com

Nintendo has confirmed the Switch 2 uses DLSS and ray tracing technology, but has yet to go into detail on how exactly, or show them off.

Nvidia DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is an AI-powered technology that uses machine learning to upscale lower-resolution images in real-time, enhancing both performance and image quality in games.

This week's hour-long Nintendo Direct revealed much about the Switch 2, but Nintendo has kept technical information to a minimum. Even in the official Nintendo Switch 2 tech specs there is only confirmation that the console uses a "custom processor" made by Nvidia, and no more detail.

In a hardware-focused roundtable Q&A in New York yesterday, attended by IGN, Nintendo representatives confirmed the Switch 2 uses DLSS, but did not specify which version of the tech, or whether it had been customized for Switch 2.

Takuhiro Dohta, senior director of the Programming Management Group Entertainment Planning & Development Department, at Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development Division, confirmed:

"We use DLSS upscaling technology and that's something that we need to use as we develop games.

"And when it comes to the hardware, it is able to output to a TV at a max of 4K. Whether the software developer is going to use that as a native resolution or get it to upscale is something that the software developer can choose. I think it opens up a lot of options for the software developer to choose from."

It was a similarly vague response when Dohta confirmed the Switch 2's GPU is capable of ray tracing. "Yes the GPU does support ray tracing," he said. "As with DLSS, I believe this provides yet another option for the software developer to use and a tool for them."

 

[Woopah]

Sounds like they will let Nvidia do the talking on specs.

 

[Mister Wolf]

And there it is. That outta silence the chicken littles.

 

[XXL]

Sounds like they will let Nvidia do the talking on specs.

Yeah, something is strange here.

What they have shown doesn't seem to be using DLSS.

Nintendo Switch 2 Current Game Footage Has No Indication of NVIDIA DLSS Usage; Performance Shown Is on PS4/PS4 Pro Level

The Nintendo Switch 2 game footage shown during yesterday's Direct has no indication of NVIDIA DLSS usage, or even any sort of AA.

wccftech.com

Who's gonna tell us? Lol.

 

[Bojji]

Some games will use it for sure. Maybe developer tools still don't have it available to devs and that's why we don't see it with launch games.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

 

[Robb]

Thought they wouldn't bother with it at all since we hadn't heard anything about it.

These news are still very strange, and games seemingly not using it at all is also very strange, but it's nice to know it's there in some capacity at least.

 

[alphachino]

Could the vagueness possibly br because it uses DLSS 1.0 which was absolutely trash?

 

[Gaiff]

Could the vagueness possibly br because it uses DLSS 1.0 which was absolutely trash?

Pretty much impossible.

 

[Gonzito]

Zelda is definitely not using it in the trailers

 

[tr1p1ex]

pretty sure if DLSS is a miracle cure with no downsides and cheap then Nintendo will be using it. They have launched more hardware and released more games than neogaf.

 

[daclynk]

 

[Magic Carpet]

All they have to do is turn off DLSS to get that signature Nintendo jaggy look.
All other games can turn it on.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

They already used it since the n64

 

[alphachino]

WW

Pretty much impossible.

We shall see. I bet the licencing of DLSS tech is not cheap and if Nintendo spent money to licence a later version in custom silicon, they would have promoted it. As I said, time will tell.

 

[BennyBlanco]

I found it weird that Jensen didn't talk about Nintendo at all in their CES keynote. He was giving shoutouts to electric car companies that have probably sold less than 10k cars total.

 

[XXL]

That outta silence the chicken littles.

I would wait for some more details, before determining anything either way.

The fact their being vague about it, isn't great....but this is Nintendo....so who fucking knows? Lol.

 

[kevboard]

Could the vagueness possibly br because it uses DLSS 1.0 which was absolutely trash?

no it can't.

DLSS 1.0 is actually more computationally expensive on the tensor cores than 2.0

 

[Gaiff]

WW

We shall see. I bet the licencing of DLSS tech is not cheap and if Nintendo spent money to licence a later version in custom silicon, they would have promoted it. As I said, time will tell.

There's no licensing fee for DLSS. It's also pretty much impossible to use DLSS1 anymore. It was trained on a per-game basis using NVIDIA's neural network with 16K resolution images from the game. It was a spacial upscaler, not a temporal one and NVIDIA has abandoned it, so I'd be really surprised if they're using it.

 

[Comandr]

I would wait for some more details, before determining anything either way.

The fact their being vague about it, isn't great....but this is Nintendo....so who fucking knows? Lol.

You'd think they'd want to shout it from the rooftops that they have the only console capable of the world's best upscaling tech. That seems like a huge selling point to me. So why are they being so coy about it? I wonder if early internal testing has yielded poor results.

 

[yamaci17]

incredible
if it ends up with dlss 3/4, it will be able to produce higher quality visuals in certain aspects (temporal stability, temporal motion clarity) than ps5 and xbox series x that is limited to horrible FSR 3 nowadays
540p/720p with dlss 4 often looks better than 1080p with fsr 3

it is not even funny

 

[Mownoc]

Nvidia made sure the hardware supported it for them but Nintendo are still trying to figure out how they work.

 

[OverHeat]

 

[adamsapple]

 

[RagnarokIV]

don't wet your pants mate, Switch 2 is about to yeet your 5090

 

[PeteBull]

Could the vagueness possibly br because it uses DLSS 1.0 which was absolutely trash?

We know switch gpu is 8nm ampere gpu, aka 30xx series card, so they gonna use dlss3(coz dlss4 has a nasty performance hit, i know coz i got 3080ti in my personal rig, dlss4 is roughly 30% more demanding on it, on 40xx and 50xx cards there is no performance hit), the problem switch2 has is- how good dlss gonna be depends on the amount of AI flops in it, and obviously the smaller gpu chip- the weaker ai upscaling(so dlss) capabilities.

 

[Same ol G]

I don't know how long some of you have been around but Nintendo stopped with communicating the exact specs since GC.
Their specs were better and more balanced than PS2 but the amount of misinformation that made the rounds made them realise that specs aren't the deciding factor.
(Also they lost that gen with better hardware)
After that they released the Wii and that console raped the competition, Nintendo learned that specs don't matter and let their games do the talking.

I don't understand why you'd think they would give a spec sheet with their newest console knowing it's already weaker on paper than the competition

 

[ADiTAR]

maybe they want to slowly upgrade the visual of games, who knows.

 

[Abysse]

"Super Vague"

No surprises.

 

[dragonyeuw]

We're gonna have to wait for someone like Digital Foundry to get their hands on it and strip it down. I'm surprised Nintendo even bothered going into detail on the screen because they clearly don't want consumers focused on the specs.

 

[lestar]

it seems their devkits use dlss 1.0/FSR1 for what trey showed yesterday, especially the street fighter jaggies edition. The only games that's seems to use raytracing and a current version of dlss is CP2077 and Starwars outlaws

 

[Little Chicken]

The Mario game will use RT for some 'mirror' level and that will be the system's best use of RT for the entire lifespan.

 

[yamaci17]

We know switch gpu is 8nm ampere gpu, aka 30xx series card, so they gonna use dlss3(coz dlss4 has a nasty performance hit, i know coz i got 3080ti in my personal rig, dlss4 is roughly 30% more demanding on it, on 40xx and 50xx cards there is no performance hit), the problem switch2 has is- how good dlss gonna be depends on the amount of AI flops in it, and obviously the smaller gpu chip- the weaker ai upscaling(so dlss) capabilities.

that's ray reconstruction
regular DLSS 4 is barely a 5-10% performance hit even on a 3050


also there is a performance hit even on a 5080


dlss 4 is just harder to run but it doesn't matter. you can just use a lower internal resolution, get better performance, still get better image quality

there really is no point of using dlss 3 with any dlss capable hardware unless the game has visual problems with dlss 4 (ac shadows has a lot of visual issues with dlss 4 for example). it has insane temporal motion clarity over dlss 3 at half the internal resolution



this should look incredible on the switch 2 screen

 

[Doctor Hades]

I am hoping that DLSS is used when the Switch 2 is in the dock as it has already been confirmed that it supports 4K output for TVs. This is where DLSS is absolutely essential in my opinion on a low spec hybrid console/handheld in my opinion. Those jaggies might be acceptable on an 8" 1080p screen but they won't look so hot blown up to 4K on a 55"+ TV without something like DLSS.

I don't have any interest in playing Switch 2 games in handheld mode personally, I just want acceptable output when I play games on a TV, something that the original Switch fails at in 98% of games I've played.

 

[amigastar]

maybe they want to slowly upgrade the visual of games, who knows.

Looking at the launch titles from Nintendo i'm pretty sure they will gradually upgrade their graphics on the Switch 2.

 

[StueyDuck]

Watch it be limited to only that nintendo hardware tech demo game

 

[Buggy Loop]

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

B-but Digital Foundry said there was no DLSS in games!!!

I am hoping that DLSS is used when the Switch 2 is in the dock as it has already been confirmed that it supports 4K output for TVs. This is where DLSS is absolutely essential in my opinion on a low spec hybrid console/handheld in my opinion. Those jaggies might be acceptable on an 8" 1080p screen but they won't look so hot blown up to 4K on a 55"+ TV without something like DLSS.

I don't have any interest in playing Switch 2 games in handheld mode personally, I just want acceptable output when I play games on a TV, something that the original Switch fails at in 98% of games I've played.

Sensible take. DLSS still requires some juice and when in handheld you want to maximize performance for the battery. It's when the system is docked when the DLSS would be utilized. Whether it's something done outright at the system level or that games need to manually implement support for (I'm starting to suspect the latter) remains to be seen.

We're gonna have to wait for someone like Digital Foundry to get their hands on it and strip it down. I'm surprised Nintendo even bothered going into detail on the screen because they clearly don't want consumers focused on the specs.

We need a real independent 3P outlet for a hardware analysis, so that immediately disqualifies Digital Foundry.

 

[Lokaum D+]

we have it, but wont use it for now

 

[Zathalus]

B-but Digital Foundry said there was no DLSS in games!!!

There isn't.

 

[Kataploom]

I've been thinking about this since yesterday, but I think that Mario Party Jamboree in the new Bowser game is using RT for floor reflections, the reason why I think so is because sometimes there are details in the reflection not seen in the screen space like when Bowser had the tail occluded by a leg yet in the reflection you could clearly see it, and also there's a small difference in perspective from the model and the reflection... Not sure if this is enough for it to be RT

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Nintendo is in the graphics race boys!!!

 

[Horseganador]

And why don't they use it in the launch games? So much understanding with NS2, but not so much with others.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

There isn't.

But there is. It's just not in the games THEY looked at

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Some games will use it for sure. Maybe developer tools still don't have it available to devs and that's why we don't see it with launch games.

According to Bojji that means the should delay the launch of the system... of course that isn't what you think, you're just being hypocritical as usual.

 

[Bojji]

According to Bojji that means the should delay the launch of the system... of course that isn't what you think, you're just being hypocritical as usual.

Sony gave broken/not finished PSSR to third party devs...

PSSR in their own games was fine but they should have improved it before giving it to third parties. I always was talking about PSSR itself not system launch but of course you like to twist my words.

 

[zeroluck]

For Nintendo's pixels, it is faster to render them then to upscale them.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Sony gave broken/not finished PSSR to third party devs...

PSSR in their own games was fine but they should have improved it before giving it to third parties. I always was talking about PSSR itself not system launch but of course you like to twist my words.

• FF7 Rebirth looked great at launch as did many other games
• PSSR will never be "finished" that's the very nature of the thing
• Games didn't even need to use PSSR and some have not
  • There was good implementation and bad implementation which goes for basically every piece of tech in gaming
• No one is twisting your words, and this is an opportunity (that you won't take) to re-evaluate the stuff you're saying

 

[Robb]

 

[Zathalus]

But there is. It's just not in the games THEY looked at

Yes, that is what they reported. None of the games shown off so far have DLSS yet.