Even though the existence of a Nintendo Switch OLED model put a small dampener on the ever-growing array of various Switch Pro rumors, the latest word from one of Nvidia's employees may bring them all back for round two. The OLED model of the aging console may have brought it back into the limelight, but its core hardware is still going out of date, and it's a bit of a given that Nintendo is working on something new in the background.
This new version of the Nintendo Switch has long been rumored to run Nvidia's Tegra 239 SoC, the existence of which wasn't corroborated until a few days back. Specifically, an Nvidia employee referenced the Tegra 239 out of the blue in a random comment posted in one of the company's driver patch notes. Specifically, the notes state that this SoC has "eight cores in a single cluster," which tracks with what leaker kopite7kimi has said some time ago.
According to kopite7kimi, who has a proven track record in regard to Nvidia leaks, Nintendo would sooner or later end up using "T239" for one of its projects, fueling the next wave of Nintendo Switch Pro rumors. This comment was initially provided with minimum extra context, short of an image of Nvidia's baseline T234 SoC, which kopite7kimi claimed would be customized to create the T239. Now, however, Nvidia's own engineer has not only confirmed that kopite7kimi was correct but also revealed a few more tidbits of info about it.
Nintendo Switch OLED is an exciting proposition, but it still relies on the old Nvidia Tegra X1 SoC, which is severely underpowered when it comes to running cutting-edge games. Tegra 239 should, instead, provide a substantial power boost to the next generation of Switch consoles, and it's entirely possible that it even supports some form of resolution upscaling (i.e. DLSS) or even a baseline raytracing support.
Nintendo is, after all, facing a new and potentially unforeseen problem in 2022: Valve's Steam Deck. This handheld PC might be a niche offering that doesn't natively support any Nintendo exclusives, but the fact that Steam Deck runs Spider-Man Remastered perfectly fine does have the potential of making Nintendo's current product lineup somewhat rudimentary in some respects. A T239-powered Switch could potentially deliver far better performance than even the Steam Deck, however, and that's before using DLSS-based technology to upscale the image further still.
In fact, some believe that the release of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom may follow in Breath of the Wild's own footsteps, with Nintendo revealing or outright launching the next-gen Switch during the game's launch window. Short of precedent, however, there's no real reason to believe this will be the case just yet. At the same time, it seems increasingly more likely that a new version of the Switch may be coming.
Source: linux.org