Information on the RAM and storage specs of the Nintendo Switch‘s successor may have been found by internet sleuths.
Members of the Famiboards forum have been tracking customs and shipping data for some time now, in an attempt to find information on shipments being sent between Nintendo, Nvidia and other parts manufacturers.
According to some members, shipping information from March, which has only recently been made publicly available, has now turned up references to a number of new shipments with new codenames, which they believe refer to components for the next Nintendo console.
One listing is for a 6GB RAM chip, of which two will reportedly be used for a total of 12GB RAM. It’s currently unclear whether it will be LPDDR5 or LPDDR5X RAM, but it will reportedly run at speeds of 7,500 million transfers per second.
By comparison, the original Switch had 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, which ran at speeds of up to 3,200 million transfers per second.
Another listing suggests the Switch’s built-in storage will be 256GB and will be UFS 3.1, which means potential read speeds of up to 2,100 MB/s (compared to the original Switch’s 32GB storage, which peaks at around 300MB/s).
While at this stage it’s impossible to tell exactly how this will all play out in terms of the actual performance of Nintendo’s next console, the data does suggest it will be significantly more powerful than that of its predecessor.
Comparisons with other consoles are far less straightforward, particularly because Nintendo’s next console will use Nvidia tech and ARM architecture, versus the AMD tech and x86 architecture in Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
The reported storage speed of 2,100 MB/s does come close to the 2.4 GB/s read speed of the Xbox Series X/S, however.
It’s also currently unclear how much the Switch’s successor will make use of Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology, which could result in better visual detail with less GPU power.
Nintendo confirmed earlier this week that it will announce its next console “this
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Chris Scullion