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Rumour: Nintendo Switch Dev Kit Stats Leaked? Cortex A57, 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage, Multi-Touch

Nintendo announced its next generation system today called the Nintendo Switch although as we all suspected they didn’t reveal technical specifications for the system. These may well come at a later date, but Nintendo has a habit of not disclosing the horse power behind their systems. Reliable Twitter user NWPlayer123 has apparently learnt of the specifications from the development kits which are in the hands of a number of video game developers right now. Here’s what she has learned.

  • Four ARM Cortex-A57 cores, max 2GHz
  • NVidia second-generation Maxwell architecture
  • 256 CUDA cores, max 1 GHz, 1024 FLOPS/cycle
  • 4GB RAM (25.6 GB/s, VRAM shared)
  • 32 GB storage (Max transfer 400 MB/s)
  • USB 2.0 & 3.0
  • 1280 x 720 6.2″ IPS LCD
  • 1080p at 60 fps or 4k at 30 fps max video output
  • Capcitance method, 10-point multi-touch

Source / Source 

132 thoughts on “Rumour: Nintendo Switch Dev Kit Stats Leaked? Cortex A57, 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage, Multi-Touch”

    1. BD´s are 25GB single layer and 50GB dual layer. A memory cartridge of 32GB is ok.
      Additional memory will be supplied by (dockstation HD´s ?) or even SD Cards ! What is the problem? Do you really want a portable device with 500GB SSD? Prepare US$1000 for that !

    2. For what it’s worth, PS4 or Xbox One dump half the game into the hard drive to even run at decent speeds. With carts you really wouldn’t have to and read the game off the cart for the most part so while I agree I’d like more space, I remember I survived the whole Xbox 360 generation with just the base models 20gb lol. Hopefully there are larger size options though and perhaps the ability to store DLC onto the carts themselves !

      1. You say this, while there are AAA games pushing well over 50 or even 64GB lately, so that advantage doesn’t even begin to matter in the titles (you folks better pray to whatever god will listen) that comes to this platform.

        1. Not real sure what you are getting at but that’s why I’m saying the other 2 have to load most of the game into the hard drive so it reads fast enough and minimize load times. Keep in mind that SNES carts started out relatively small and more than doubled at the end of the SNES’s life. All while being durable and loading almost instantly .

          If you are talking about saving digital games then that’s why I said I’d like more space but I go physical copy anyway so that not my concern.

          As far as getting games the Switch will definitely have games.. Maybe not the crap over load like the other two but we’ll def get more games than Wii U did.

    3. You miss understand, these are the specs for a developers kit. Not then final system. Dev kits are always underpowered so that is 100% going to work with final hardware. This is another reason way early games never look their best. It well most likely accept sd or micro sd, and thus storage (with news from san disk) well be able to go up to 1TB. Coming from a handheld / home system

    4. Yeah but have you noticed that PS4 games makes you install 20 gigs or more when you first insert a disc on it? Then again the updates and DLC’s (if you buy DLC’s that is…) they store even more data….
      On my Wii U, i haven’t installed anything that big… sure it’s not enough space, but that is why we get the option to use an external HDD. I have a 500 gig one and it isn’t even at 25% of storage used on it.
      My PS4 is full and i haven’t installed any games on it, just disc games and i still have little to no memory left for more games…. i have to delete stuff.

        1. It will have an sd card expansion slot… just like the wii and the wii u.
          What i was going with this, was that nintendo games don’t usually require so much space. Unless you buy all digital…

    5. Rumours suggest that the thing will have an SD card slot. If it supports SDXC then I can get an SDXC 128 GB card for under £30, or $40. I feel it makes a lot more sense to separate this from the cost of the system and allow the consumer to get the memory solution they choose – 32 GB will suffice for basic usage.

  1. If this is true…

    4GB = sucks.
    2nd Maxwell? Really? GTX 980? = well… if it’s at least a 980gtx. could run mostly all ps4/xone games.
    32 GB storage = In the console? in those cartridges? Hmm neither of both are good ideas.

    It’s like a mix between 2 Wiiu’s duct taped, with some effort trying to be a ps4.

    =/ i don’t know, mix feelings if this is true. I prefer the mobile/tablet part be with those specs and the dock station gives more boost to the whole system, like there were 3 Wiiu’s duct-taped or something like that.

      1. We all know that, but at the same time some PC Games can’t look/run the same as ps4/xone games. Depends on the way the games are designed for even if the games are created on a PC.

        I think we just have to wait and see. The problem with Nintendo is that they never released the specs.

        I wish someday Nintendo announce a console in E3 like the Wii did and they say “Here’s a 12core machine with 12gb ram and a gtx1080 gpu. You wanted power at an affordable price, right? it cost $400”,
        That itself could drive a looot of power hungry devs to the console, but i don’t think Nintendo want to be on top of sony and microsoft.

        :( patient..a lot of patient.

      1. (source: Nvidia)
        Second generation Maxwell Graphics Cards:
        GeForce GTX TITAN X – Cuda Cores > 3072 GFlops > 7.0 Gbps > 12 GB
        GeForce GTX 980 – Cuda Cores > 2048 Gflops > 7.0 Gbps > 4 GB
        GeForce GTX 980Ti – Cuda Cores > 2816 Gflops > 7.0 Gbps > 6 GB
        GeForce GTX 970 – Cuda Cores > 1664 Gflops > 7.0 Gbps > 4 GB
        GeForce GTX 960 – Cuda Cores > 1024 Glops > 7.0 Gbps > 2GB

        So less power than a GTX 960? Which cost around $200 right now.
        Maybe it’s a custom Tegra X2..

          1. The same i’m thinking. Now that the dock it’s confirmed just a dock for charging. I just want the tablet had a Tegra x2 inside, that’s all.

        1. why are you comparing cuda cores to floating point performance? The gtx 960 has 1024 shader units and scores 2308 in floating point performance, which is much much higher than the tegra x2 which has 256 shader units and gets 1024 in floating point performance.

    1. You’re delusional if you’re expecting desktop GPU performance out of what’s explicitly a family of mobile GPUs. The specs in this article alone debunk your GTX980 talk, so do you even know what the hell you’re talking about?

    2. There’s so much wrong with your comment….
      1. 4gb is enough for games which will be well optimized
      2. Maxwell doesn’t mean a gtx 980, it means it uses the same architecture as the gtx 980 but performs nowhere near it. Also, a gtx 980 is much much more powerful than any console out right now and can play any game at better resolution and graphics settings than a console.

  2. This doesn’t sound promising. A 4 core CPU? 4 GB of RAM and only 32 GB of storage? The cartridges will help with storage, but 32 gb won’t last long; especially for people who prefer digital.

    1. If those are the tablet specs, we’ll probably be OK, but if that’s with the docking station, and if it doesn’t have Micro-SD expansion ability, then… All those development supporters will release one or two games then bail like WiiU. :/

    2. these are the dev-kit specs. As another comment mentioned, dev-kits are usually not as powerful as the final product to ensure quality.

      1. A 4 core CPU capable of running at 2 Ghz compared to PS4’s 8 core CPU capable of running at 2.75 Ghz.

        I never said that 4 cores wasn’t “fine”. I said it didn’t sound promising. It certainly isn’t ideal.

        1. PS4’s CPU is clocked at 1.6ghz, not 2.75. Doesn’t matter if it’s capable, increasing clocks results in more heat which it clearly is only barely able to handle at base clocks.

          1. 1.6 is the base clock speed of PS4. 2.75 is the chip’s max capability.

            Likewise, this article says that the Switch CPU will be “maximum 2 Ghz”. If this rumor is true than it will have a lower base clock speed.

            1. BWAHAHAHAHA.. did you just say that the PS4 can go from a 1.6Ghz clock speed to 2.75Ghz!? An increase of 1.15Ghz over the factory would no doubt cause it to overheat. The fan is already loud enough as is. The specs for the PS4 Pro aren’t even 2.75Ghz last I heard. If it can, cal me surprised.

              1. What’s wrong with people on this site? Are they illiterate or do they just choose to ignore what’s being said. I never said that it was feasible to run the PS4 at it’s max clock speed. I never even said that it was possible. All I said was that the chip itself is capable of running at 2.75 Ghz max.

  3. Sounds perfectly accurate. There’s just no way hell they can fit a beefy graphics card into the tablet or the docking station. They’re just waaay too small. With that said, if the Switch sells well (hard to say right now) the third party support they claim they have will keep on making “gimp” versions of their AAA games for it.

      1. A version of a game that has less features or content, than what the game has on other platforms. Example: Tom Clancy SplinterCell on Wii U shipped with issues and had no co-op, compared to the versions on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

    1. We need more info.
      Are these even real?
      If so, are they current with retail?
      If so is it just the tablet, or are the the max specs?

      We don’t know nearly enough to get concerned or excited yet. I wouldn’t worry at the moment.

  4. Nintendo First Order Commander Quadraxis

    ||It’s amusing how most are so excited about how great the games look and seem to be but as soon as some specifications are announced or rumoured then everything suddenly turns bad by default and is no longer about the games…||

    ||This is why the Xbots must be destroyed, they poisoned you all with shallow garbage…||

    1. I don’t want to spend 300-400 dollars on a system that’ll barely get any support. Specs are important and Nintendo doesn’t seem to realize that. Oh, and stop with your ||italic aesthetic|| as it makes you sound like you have a rude and disrespectful edge.

      Acting like the competition ruins everything is just dumb. Don’t do it.

      1. Nintendo First Order Commander Quadraxis

        ||I was going to reply but then someone went totally irrelevant somewhere in the middle…||

      2. NS will likely be way better supported than the Wii U though, since it will have Nintendo’s full attention, as well as most of 3DS third party’s, and if it sells well, it will have other third party support as well (just perhaps not all the same games that will be available on other systems).

  5. I’m confused as to why people are assuming a dev kit would have the same internal storage as a commercial system. Devs don’t need the same internal storage as the final build to develop games

  6. If it’s true that the NS could run anything you throw at it what’s the problem? Isn’t that what we wanted? 32GB could be a little low for storage but with games on cartridges does that really matter? If you want to take all of your games with you it’ll still be very easy to do so, just not with the boxes. SD cards will also help.

    1. Sure it’s what we wanted. But there is no system that can run anything that’s thrown at it and this doesn’t even seem like it could handle the ports from xbox one being thrown at it.

      1. It has been confirmed to run Unreal Engine 4. At this point I’m waiting for Nintendo to release the official specs. This is way too crazy.

  7. the problem here is how will they manage to “switch” from the TV to the portable console… Meaning that the console itself will simply be a tablet… And a adjacent docking bay to play on the tv…

  8. Hoping this rumor is not true regarding the memory it has. Many people buy digital games myself including, for patches and all of the games 32gb is nothing. Hoping for the multi touch and idk about graphics cards so I cant comment on that however I don’t care cus it’s Gna be mobile and have console quality what more can I ask for. Give me a good Pokémon game and that’s all I need lol but I can see how people are worried about this because of developer support and whatnot so we will see

  9. I think many will agree that these specs are nothing to shout about. But these are ‘apparently’ for the dev kits so I’d assume the full console to have slightly different specs.

    However, I’ve never been one to base my gaming purchases on the graphical prowess or fidelity of a game or console. If the NS has great first party support like we expect from Nintendo and third party support like we see on the PS4 and XBONE then I see no reason why it won’t be a success.

    I’m predominantly a Sony player but a gamer or all consoles. If the NS has the above then I’ll be getting it day one,

  10. Nintendo realizes the price of expandable storage gets cheaper and cheaper. So why make the consumer pay top dollar for 500 GB of storage when you can get it cheaper elsewhere.

  11. I am not complaining yet. 24 hrs ago we didnt even know what it looks like. Actually Im more impressed with the 1080p and 4k more than the storage. Im sure the cartridges help and the games could be cheaper to buy.

  12. Love the idea of the Switch, every single aspect, it looks amazing. But specs like these are quite frankly not gonna fly. Unless theres more power in the dock, this thing is making the same mistake the Wii U did. The Wii U didn’t necessarily get no support because it sold poorly, it was because the specs were trash for the time.

    If these specs are correct, it will probably Wii U all over again.

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    1. Are you not aware of the existence of SD cards? Or external storage?
      I’m sure NS supports one of these two, if not both.
      In fact I know for sure it supports the second.

  14. I am still more impressed how they got a tablet to be a hybrid console. I am not worried about the specs yet because there is still so much we do not know yet. What if it has a GPU with a massive foot print like Wii U does? Dont forget the Wiii U did things that according to the spec sheet wasn’t supposed to do.

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  16. People , don’t get into the underpowered train just yet . specially the 32gb memory thing . first of all these are dev kits , and they can be very very weak at the beginning , in fact if we take Wii u as an example , its dev kit got to almost 40% more power than the first one. And don’t forget 4gb of ram could be the availlable for dev memory , let’s take Xbox one as an example , it has 8gb of ram but only 5gb is accessible to the dev. And from the games I saw specially the NBA 2k game , this device is proving to be more powerful than we thought. Let’s all assume that these specs are true ( which i really doubt) these specs are more than enough to render at 720p(resolution of the screen) and at that resolution 4gb memory is quite enough , more than enough. Anyway , we don’t know yet so we got to wait for more details.

  17. Straight from Nvidia, this does not sound underpowered to me by anymeans

    Nintendo Switch is powered by the performance of the custom Tegra processor. The high-efficiency scalable processor includes an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards.

    The Nintendo Switch’s gaming experience is also supported by fully custom software, including a revamped physics engine, new libraries, advanced game tools and libraries. NVIDIA additionally created new gaming APIs to fully harness this performance. The newest API, NVN, was built specifically to bring lightweight, fast gaming to the masses.

    Gameplay is further enhanced by hardware-accelerated video playback and custom software for audio effects and rendering.

    We’ve optimized the full suite of hardware and software for gaming and mobile use cases. This includes custom operating system integration with the GPU to increase both performance and efficiency.

    NVIDIA gaming technology is integrated into all aspects of the new Nintendo Switch home gaming system, which promises to deliver a great experience to gamers.

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  19. When yall techs discuss power are we talking about power as if PS4 Pro and Nintendo Switch are lifting weights and which ever lifts the heaviest wins or power as in able to handle multiple features?

  20. Okay, I’ll admit first hand that I’m no tech guru, but don’t dev kits usually not contain the full specs of the system?

    Didn’t the 3DS originally have lots of it’s power locked at first and then Nintendo allowed for more of it to be used later on? I thought it was something like that.

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  23. My thoughts on the specs of this kit and the Nintendo Switch were that since the console is running on the Nvidia chipset, I’m going to assume that the CPU power won’t be very good.

    Note to self: Don’t think about the bad stuff too harshly or else that’s going to happen.

    Looking at the specs, the base CPU power is higher than most consoles but since this is a mobile based CPU, I don’t think there will be overclocking available. The RAM is certainly higher than most mobile devices but doesn’t compete with the 8GB of RAM that the other consoles use.

    Overall, this could compete with mobile devices but I’m not sure it’ll compete with the Xbox One and the PS4.

  24. Cartridges/ memory card based games serve as a memory extension with practically no seek time, and fast data transfer to main memory (if needed at all, since it’s a memory extension). Also, you can embed custom chips on cartridges which extend the functionality of the core system when needed. While the Switch seems to have taken the card route, I would expect any system upgrading to be strictly software.
    My point is, you don’t need as much memory when you are using memory devices for the games themselves. The games will load lightning fast off the cards without the need of loading half the game or better to a hard drive which will be slower loading than the card.

  25. Not too keen on the 32gb thing. It’d be nice to be able to rely on the console’s built in memory for at least 6 months to a year before ever having to go out & buy more, better storage. Even if game cartridges come with built in room to allow for patches & DLC to be added to the cartridge itself, there is the issue of people wanting to buy digital games. They’ll need more than 32gb to last that amount of time. Anyone defending 32gb is honestly an idiot or just a fanboy since customers should not be forced to buy SD cards & other shit to boost memory in the first 6 months of a new console’s life span. In fact, Sony were foolish to only give PS4s 500gb.

    Either way, this is just a rumor right now since Nintendo hasn’t specified much of anything.

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