Alleged Nintendo Switch Pro customized SoC model number points to a chip that will destroy the Switch's Tegra X1+ in raw processing power

The well-known frequent Nvidia tipster kopite7kimi has offered up a tidbit in regard to the Nintendo Switch Pro console. Along with a post of a die shot of the Nvidia Tegra Orin chip, the leaker commented “Nintendo will use a customized one, T239”. The model number for the Orin semiconductor is T234, so with this information to hand, there has been some excited speculation about the power a Switch Pro could yield.

The Orin chip has frequently been mentioned in connection with a Switch Pro device, or whatever Nintendo ends up calling its next-gen console, and we previously opined that it would have to be a scaled-down variant of the processor if it was going to power a portable gaming machine. There are different TDP variants of Orin, with a 15 W SKU (customized Orin S) offering the best potential option for a Nintendo Switch Pro.

As we mentioned before, the highlights of the regular Orin processor are its GPU part with 2,048 CUDA cores and Ampere architecture and the CPU component with 12x ARM Cortex-A78AE cores (Hercules). LPDDR5 memory support and a bandwidth of 200 GB/s should have would-be Nintendo Switch Pro buyers champing at the (256-) bit even, as the 2017 Switch’s Tegra X1 processor only offered a 64-bit bus and 25.6 GB/s bandwidth.

Of course, a scaled-down customized version of the Orin SoC won’t offer quite as much GPU processing power as a full-sized SKU, but the potential Nintendo Switch Pro chip will still blow the previous-generation console’s processor clear out of the water. The full specs and clock rates of the Ampere/Hercules processor have yet to be publicly shared, so unfortunately the T234 (Orin) cannot be directly compared with the T210/T214 (Tegra X1/X1A) at the moment.

Buy the Nintendo Switch Lite on Amazon