Nintendo Switch 2 May Only Deliver 4K, 30 FPS With NVIDIA DLSS, but It Would Be A “Misuse” of the Upscaler

The Nintendo Switch 2 may be able to deliver only 4K resolution, 30 frames per second gameplay with NVIDIA DLSS, but we are unlikely to see this scenario much, as it would be a "misuse" of the upscaler.

The tech experts at Digital Foundry discussed if the next Nintendo console could be able to deliver 4K, 60 FPS gameplay with NVIDIA DLSS in a new video. The consensus seems it won't be able to for a few reasons. Upscaling to 4K resolution is more expensive than upscaling to 1080p and 1440p resolutions, and it would be an extremely large part of the frametime of a game, leaving 60 FPS off the table. Given how Nintendo tries to go for 60 FPS in most of its games, it is unlikely they will go for 30 FPS to have NVIDIA DLSS upscale to 4K resolution.

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How 4K, 60 FPS is likely not viable on the Nintendo Switch 2 was also highlighted in a previous test where Digital Foundry attempted to replicate the T239 chip that will power the system. In this test, upscaling from 720p to 4K with DLSS Ultra Performance in Death Stranding added 18.3 milliseconds to frametime over native resolution, which would fail to deliver a 60 FPS experience. Upscaling to 1440p, on the other hand, looks way more viable, as it only added 7.7 milliseconds over native 720p resolution. As such, 4K, 30 FPS could be doable, but it would be a misuse of the upscaler, having over half GPU time spent on just upscaling. Such a high fixed cost on the GPU would also be difficult for developers to work around and greatly limit what they could achieve on the system.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is said to support Ray Reconstruction alongside NVIDIA DLSS, which would make it the best ray tracing-capable gaming console to date. Hopefully, it won't take much longer to see how these technologies will be used to deliver a next-gen Nintendo gaming experience.