Recently, some "cyber detectives" who have been paying attention to the new Switch for a long time may have discovered its RAM and storage specifications. It is reported that the information comes from customs and shipping data in March, involving Nintendo, Nvidia and other parts suppliers.
Forum members have uncovered multiple new shipping codes and shipping records, speculating that these may be related to components of the next-generation Nintendo console. One of the records shows that the new device will be equipped with a dual-channel 6GB RAM chip for a total of 12GB of RAM. Although it is not yet certain whether it will be LPDDR5 or LPDDR5X RAM, the transfer speed is expected to reach 75 million times per second. Compared to the original Switch's 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, its transfer speed is only 32 million times per second, and the improvement of the new specifications is obvious.
In addition, the new Switch has a built-in storage capacity of 256GB, which uses the UFS 3.1 standard, and is expected to achieve a read speed of up to 2100MB/s, far exceeding the peak speed of 300MB/s of the original 32GB storage. While it's impossible to predict exactly how these hardware upgrades will affect the overall performance of next-gen consoles, it's foreseeable that the new devices will significantly outperform their predecessors in terms of performance.
Compared to the Xbox and PlayStation, which use AMD technology and x86 architecture, the performance evaluation of Nintendo's new device is more complicated, as it will use NVIDIA technology and ARM architecture. However, the new device's reported storage speed of 2100MB/s is close to the Xbox Series X/S's 2.4GB/s read speed.
For now, there is still further clarity on how the new Switch will take advantage of Nvidia's DLSS technology to deliver more detailed visuals at lower GPU power. Nintendo announced earlier this week that it will unveil the next generation of consoles within the current fiscal year, which will be public by the end of March 2025 at the latest.