Nintendo Switch: Reportedly Leaked Documents Detail Specs

CPU, GPU, RAM - all the capitalised tech terms you could want.

By Joe Skrebels

A set of documents made for developers has seemingly revealed the Nintendo Switch's much-rumoured hardware specifications, alongside other unmentioned features of the hybrid console.

Released on NeoGAF, the apparent leak goes into exacting detail about the console, seemingly written while the console was still codenamed NX.

Most notably, the documents include a rundown of the console's internal specifications - a set of details Nintendo has not yet fully released.

The console's CPU appears to be a quad-core ARM Cortex-A57, with a maximum speed of 2GHz, while the GPU is a Maxwell-based Nvidia chip (so not Nvidia's new Pascal architecture), featuring 256 CUDA cores, a 1GHz maximum speed and one teraflop of processing power (this lines up with a Digital Foundry report from last year, incidentally).

The console apparently also features 4GB of RAM, shared with VRAM. The maximum size of Switch cartridge is seemingly 32GB.

It's worth bearing in mind that these specs are seemingly for a Switch that was itself in development - even if the documents are true, there remains the chance that upgrades or different decisions have been made since.

The documents also contain various bits of information that were previously unknown or hazy:

• The console's Home menu theme can be black or white, but more colours may be added.
• Holding the Home button will open a "Quick Settings" page, including commonly-used controls like brightness levels or in-flight mode. Quick Settings won't pause or minimise the application in use.
• In Handheld Mode, the game will have an unlock feature to stop the console turning on accidentally - it's unlocked by pressing the same button or tapping the touchscreen three times.
• Screenshots will be saved as 1280x720 JPEGs, even when taken in higher resolution TV mode.
• Screenshots can have text added to them.
• Nintendo's internal estimate for regular battery life is 3 hours.
• The console's on-screen keyboard features predictive text functions, which learn from usage.
• Up to eight user accounts can be saved to a single Switch.
• User accounts can be tailored to the games using them - for instance, a party game might require no one to be signed in, while a ranked fighting game would.
• There is currently no support for paid-for in-game currency items (although this may have been at the time of the document being written, rather than at release).
• Switch devkits do indeed have twice the internal memory of retail units.

As always with leaks of this type, there remains a chance that this is an elaborate fake - IGN has reached out to Nintendo for comment.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and he's delighted to learn that Switch dev units still use Wii Classic Controllers as debug pads. Follow him on Twitter.

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