DF Weekly: are the latest Switch 2 and PS5 Pro leaks actually plausible?

Welcome to the very latest edition of DF Direct Weekly – Digital Foundry’s regular, scheduled show discussing the latest in gaming and technology news. In an all-too-predictable scenario, we completed filming on this one several hours before the latest PlayStation 5 Pro rumours emerged, but we’re looking into those as I write this. For this week’s show, our focus is on the latest trailer for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, its associated custom PlayStation 5 console, along with the first of what is likely to be many Switch 2 fakes. This one isn’t particularly compelling, but I thought it might be interesting to share our current thoughts on what we think is real and what is certainly not.

First up, let’s quickly discuss the PS5 Pro rumours we couldn’t include in the Direct. I do think the ‘Project Trinity’ story is at least somewhat credible. Most of the hardware leaks that emerge are more wish-fulfilment as opposed to genuinely workable products. The mooted Viola APU for the PS5 Pro apparently has 60 compute units, possibly with four disabled. This would only constitute four more CUs than Xbox Series X, so in terms of a key area of expense – the main processor – it seems affordable. Moving to a likely 5nm production process also means that the APU could run at higher clock speeds. A circa 10.2TF of GPU compute in PS5 Pro rises to circa 18.6TF, assuming 56 CUs running at around 2.6GHz, up from the 2.2GHz in PS5. Notionally, that would rise to 37.3TF with RDNA 3’s dual-issue FP32 functionality (though do not that its real world use in gaming has proven limited thus far).

The Switch 2 ‘leak’ last week showed an unfeasibly large display, standard Switch controllers in an unconvincing mount and a decidedly non-Nintendo user interface. What was palpable was the complete lack of imagination though. And that’s the thing. At this point, we have a fairly solid understand of what Switch 2 will actually be. We are totally convinced that it’ll be powered by a new Nvidia SoC, likely the T239 first mentioned by the most reliable leaker of them all – kopite7kimi. Expect eight ARM A78 CPU cores, a likely 128-bit memory interface and an Ampere-class GPU with CUDA core counts in the 1536-2048 range, along with one or two custom additions that have been hinted in Nvidia LinkedIn profiles and oblique mentions in Nvidia Linux updates. At this point, DLSS2 supports seems highly likely, as does RT support – though ray tracing’s high power requirements may see limited utilisation.