Developer documentation for the Nintendo Switch has made its way online, revealing the hardware specs of the console, and many other previously unavailable details.
Nintendo, unlike Microsoft and Sony, has been keen not to mention the hardware power of the upcoming Nintendo Switch. We’re mere weeks from launch and there isn’t a single piece of official information you can find that will tell you, say, how powerful is the CPU and GPU, or how much RAM it has, and so on.
Naturally, this makes fans anticipate any official – or seemingly official – documents pertaining to the Switch specs with great excitement. A Reddit post that appeared earlier today, contains a massive amount of information. The details are sourced from three, developer-only documents covering the console’s hardware specs, system features, and other devkit instructions.
The files are big, and go into great detail – as you’d expect – into each of their respective subjects. While many of what’s included may not be relevant to the general public, some of what’s there is intriguing to say the least.
Most importantly, the documents list the Switch’s hardware specs. As you can see, the Switch appears to have a quad core ARM Cortex-A57 CPU that has a maximum speed of 2GHz. The GPU is a Maxwell-based, Nvidia chip with 256 CUDA cores and max speed of 1GHz.
The details for these two appear to be different from the most recent leak from back in December, which suggested the CPU would max out at 1GHz, not 2GHz, and the GPU would only run at 768MHz, instead of a full 1GHz.
As for RAM, the Switch appears to have 4GB of it, shared with the VRAM, according to the docs. Speaking of memory, the maximum cartridge limit seems to be 32GB, and the sizes mentioned are 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16GB besides.
Outside of specs, a section titled “E-Commerce Features,” mentions that the Switch will not have support for free-to-play-style virtual currencies at launch. Support for DLC and season passes, however, will be available. The feature is expected to appear sometime post launch.
It’s important to note that the documents date back to July 2016, and they refer to the console as the NX – the Switch’s in-development codename. We’ve also not been able to verify the claims in the documents, and while they do appear official, they could be very good fakes.
There are many more details you can glean from the documents, and NeoGAF has been pouring over them all day. So far, some of the information that came to light include talk of a smartphone-style unlock screen for handheld mode, the console’s quick menu overlay, how Miis will be integrated, and much more.
The Nintendo Switch is out March 3.
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