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The story
The thread kicked off after specific numbers surfaced for a certain ported title: 1080p/60fps on Xbox Series S versus 1080p/30fps on Switch 2, effectively making it Capcom’s own official acknowledgment that the Switch 2 comes out behind in performance. Pushback against those citing handheld constraints came quickly, with people pointing out that even TV mode (docked use) tops out at 30fps. From there, the discussion moved past a simple better-or-worse argument and escalated into a numbers-heavy showdown covering CPU and GPU generational gaps, how to weigh DLSS’s low-resolution upscaling, and estimates of real-world performance relative to the PS4. Whether it comes down to insufficient optimization or the hardware’s own limits was never settled.
What people said
Switch 2 1080p 30fps
Sorry to say, but it loses even in TV mode…
Come on, at least in TV mode you'd want it upscaling from 720p to a solid 60fps
Sorry man, it's 30fps even on TV…
Just go play some Arcade Archives instead.
Given how hyped everyone got over that choppy Elden Ring footage recently, guess they really wanted to play it that bad
Re: #11
Come on, actually read the footnote
You mean the part where it can also do variable 30-40fps?
Yeah, even counting that, it still loses to the XSS
Wasn't the Switch marketed as a home console too?
So all that trash-talk about GTA6 being 30FPS actually means it's a game Switch 2 flat-out can't run.
Both Dragon's Dogma 2 and Wilds are CPU-crushing games, so they'd need a full rebuild.
My guess is they'll rework things so even the XSS version comfortably hits 60fps, and then plan a Switch 2 version from there.
For CPU-bound games, frame rate doesn't change between XSS and PS5 Pro. GTA6 is exactly that kind of title.
That just shows how strong the XSS's CPU is on its own.
Its GPU can actually be worse than the Switch 2's depending on conditions — that's where DLSS-style correction saves it.
Just a little trivia for ya
Its CPU is about 3x faster than the PS4's, and its storage is more than 10x faster than an HDD
It's just good at dressing itself up with DLSS, so it struggles in games that need real raw performance.
Conversely, the PS5 Pro has a GPU on the level of an RTX 4070, but its CPU is on par with the XSS's, so it can't pull ahead on frame rate
The CPU is only about 1.5x the performance
Not sure what's "conversely" about it — console hardware is always built on the cheap, so of course something's underwhelming.
Splurge on one part, cut corners everywhere else — that's the default.
If everything were uniformly good it'd just be a PC, so it can't be helped 🤔
In handheld mode there's not much difference. In docked mode it's about 2x.
But factor in DLSS here too — the PS4 can't upscale so it needs around 900p, while the Switch 2 can get away with 540p, or even 360p in handheld mode.
That's exactly why I wrote "+ DLSS"
CPU performance is only slightly higher than the PS4's
The IPC gap between the A78 and the Jaguar is more than 3x.
And the PS4's CPU clock is oddly low even with no power constraints.
So yeah, 3x checks out.
Honestly it needs to be at least that much, otherwise porting down from the PS5 — whose CPU is 10x the PS4's — would be flat-out impossible.
It can't even be 1.5x, they're both Zen2.
Staying Zen2 and hitting that gap would need a clock speed over 5GHz.
"3x the PS4" is just wishful Nintendo-fan math lol
Switch 2 is roughly on par with the PS4, performance-wise.
Can we just leave it at that?
But in reality, more and more titles are dropping PS4 multiplatform support in favor of Switch 2
It's roughly 1/3 the performance of the PS5.
RaiP, which has better graphics than Onimusha, runs at a solid 60.
My impression is that outside of Resident Evil, a lot of their games feel under-optimized or inexplicably heavy for no reason.
Pragmata seemed to be in good shape, but Onimusha was a bust 🤮
Not the A78C, the plain A78 — that one's a 3x gap.
It's a bit better than Zen2.
Once you get to the X1, the IPC is on par with Zen3.
Thinking games run fast just because ARM has high IPC… that's such an amateur take
That's because the instruction set is weak
Go ahead, be specific.
Steam's ARM support is starting up too, so things will gradually converge to the same environment.
Nobody's denying that.
If anything, the reason PS4 is getting dropped from multiplatform releases is that it's only about 1/3 the power of the Switch 2.
People say "don't drop PS4 for Switch 2, they're the same performance!" but outside of the GPU there's a pretty big gap.
That's ancient history at this point — we're talking Vita-era stuff.
Once ARM went 64-bit, its "quirky" advantages went into hiding.
At the end of the day, AVX2 throughput is just in a different league.
The A78C doesn't even have SVE2 extensions, does it?
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The Switch 2 runs an NVIDIA custom chip with an Arm Cortex-A78C-series CPU core and a DLSS-capable Ampere-generation GPU. There are cases where its raw computing power falls short of the Xbox Series S, and the thread saw an ongoing back-and-forth citing figures like CPU comparisons against the PS4 (roughly 3x) and differences in IPC. The debate largely splits into two points of contention. The first is whether DLSS upscaling from a lower resolution should count as “real” performance — some argued that counting it puts the Switch 2 ahead of the PS4, while others countered that even with DLSS factored in, its raw processing power still falls behind. The second is whether the issue lies in insufficient optimization on Capcom’s part or in the hardware’s inherent limits; commenters pointed to Onimusha running heavy while Pragmata ran well as a real-world example, suggesting the amount of work put into each title may also play a role. Some also pointed out that differences in TDP and design philosophy between handheld and home consoles make simple comparisons unreasonable to begin with — so before even getting to how big the performance gap is, the discussion often proceeded without agreement on what exactly was being compared.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “[Sad News] Switch 2 Officially Told by Capcom That Its Performance Is Lower Than the XSS.”
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