Resident Switch hacking scene member SciresM, known for his work on Atmosphere CFW, has made a curious discovery via datamining. A Nintendo Switch Pro model might actually be on the way, if you believe what he's uncovered from an update on the Switch. It should be noted that while interesting, this information does not confirm anything, and much is speculation on SciresM's part after having dug around some firmware files.

Existing under the codename of Aula, this hardware uses a Mariko SoC. It also would support both handheld and docked mode, and features "substantially" better cooling and battery life. While there's nothing concrete to fully determine, SciresM thinks that the revision would support 4K when docked, with an OLED tablet screen, as it features a Realtek chip branded as having "4K UHD multimedia SoC". If it's to be believed, then Nintendo has been working on a "Switch Pro" for over a year, which would line up with many reputable outlets repeatedly claiming that Nintendo is indeed working on a more powerful Nintendo Switch system.

Nintendo actually is working on a new model with upgraded display stuff and has been for ~1.5-2 years. I personally believe it's 4K given the signs I'm seeing in the firmware, but that's not confirmed yet and could be wrong.

Aula has firmware support some Realtek chip that advertises itself as a "4K UHD multimedia SoC", too, hence my belief it's 4K. That chip might be inside a new dock and not inside the tablet, though, there's no way to tell from the firmware code yet.

Aula explicitly supports handheld mode. It is not docked only; that's calcio, which seems like it's for internal only/never releasing since Calcio has no gamecard slot and no battery.

Checked my previous discussions with hexkyz, the upgraded tablet display is an OLED screen. Probably not higher resolution on tablet itself, so I guess the 4k realtek chip is more likely to be new dock than I thought it was.

Source

 

[Flame]

I fully expect a 1080p panel for the tablet, 2K at best, and up to 4K docked, that's an optimal price to performance compromise. There's very little point in using an ultra HD panel on a screen this small, not to mention that at high resolutions yields decrease with the physical size (the smaller the pixel the harder it is to manufacture). Seems like the datamine findings somewhat support the theory. I doubt that all we'll see is a new dock too, just based on the interface used to connect the console to the dock. I expect a new SoC, and definitely more memory.

bro Foxi this is Nintendo. you expect too much.

 

[Foxi4]

bro Foxi this is Nintendo. you expect too much.

Not really - even extremely cheap SoC's now support 4K resolutions (since there's more than one standard), even if they lack the actual brawn to render anything worthwhile in UHD. 1080p panels are also exceedingly cheap to come by since the rest of the industry is now aiming higher. Honestly, it's a perfect time for Nintendo to sweep in and pick up some old tech like they always do, and at hefty discounts too. Remember, while Nintendo is still getting their first 4K console ready Sony and Microsoft are eyeing up future prospects of 8K, just like they did last generation with 4K support. It all makes perfect sense to me.

 

[Chary]

Much as I'd like a "Switch Pro", I can't help but think about how awful the New 3DS's support was. It had all of, what, two games available that made full use of the system's new power? The upgrade was completely useless...unless you homebrew'd it.

Can't wait for the hacking scene to have to inevitably fix any mistakes Nintendo makes with this one, if it's real, that is.

 

[zoogie]

A separate cpu in the dock could make for a dual screen system again. Nintendo likes revisiting old ideas with new twists.
They could also then market a "2 for 1" console value proposition. This would align with their stated, "a switch for every family member" goal.

I don't think this has anything to do with upgrading specs just for the sake of graphics, at least not to any meaningful capacity. If anything, you'd have a spec increase to allow some gimmicky new feature to be multi-tasked in the software stack (much like super stable 3d and snes emulation that the upspecced new3ds allowed).

 

[orangy57]

I'm certain that if it does support 4K output it'll be limited to an equivalent of the Xbox One S's 4K upgrade, where it's only available for videos and movies but games will still run at 900/1080p.

 

[Deleted User]

I hate OLED, the durability is crap. Besides that it doesn't sound that bad.

also, for gaming it doesnt make much sense as the response time is much worse than lcd

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

A separate cpu in the dock could make for a dual screen system again. Nintendo likes revisiting old ideas with new twists.
They could also then market a "2 for 1" console value proposition. This would align with their stated, "a switch for every family member" goal.

I don't think this has anything to do with upgrading specs just for the sake of graphics, at least not to any meaningful capacity. If anything, you'd have a spec increase to allow some gimmicky new feature to be multi-tasked in the software stack (much like super stable 3d and snes emulation that the upspecced new3ds allowed).

iirc the only reason they didnt have o3ds snes was because they needed the extra triggers for the controller change feature

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

my theory is they'll add a separate chip for AI upscaling in the dock and call it a day

 

[Anxiety_timmy]

honestly a dock with a gpu and cpu baked into it would be really damn nice
i wounder how haxed switches would take advantage of that

 

[MarkDarkness]

I hate OLED, the durability is crap. Besides that it doesn't sound that bad.

The Switch is not durable anyway. Everything there is made to be discarded, particularly the Joycons.

 

[Pikm]

Hope they release it at the current Switch's MSRP and give a price cut to the old Switch. Whatever the performance is going to be, it definitely won't match the PS4 or Xbox, and I don't think too many people will be willing to shell out more than $400 for slight improvements to a console that's already been confirmed to have support for at least the next two years.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Well, technically the current Switch is able to output 4K@24hz which could be used for Netflix etc (the dock however may be 1080p max), it's just not enabled in the firmware.
I don't realistically see any 3D games running in 4K when the current Switch can barely run many games in 568p/720p/900p with dynamic resolution scaling. And 2D games wouldn't really benefit from it.
Getting a stable 1080p@60 in games like BotW2 would make me happy though.

 

[jesus96]

Everything is great except for oled screen,seriously i hope these aren't made with the quality of the official joy-cons

 

[HelpTheWretched]

Kind of unrelated, just something I've wondered because I don't own a Switch and haven't really looked into it. Does the dock contain any additional chips or processors, or is it mainly an adapter to the TV? I know many games run at higher resolution or fps when docked but not sure if that's due to power saved from turning off the screen.

 

[Chrisssj2]

What an utter dissapointment. They could easily make a better switch.

 

[warmo161]

The only way it will do 4K is with Nvidia's DLSS ai upscaling
I dont care if I get games still running 720p, as long as everything runs at 60fps i'll be happy

 

[Moon164]

so not a switch upgrade so much as a dock upgrade.

Now it makes sense that Nintendo discontinued the production of Nintendo Switch Docks a while ago.

I wonder if it will be possible to use this new dock on the original Switch, even if it's only for 4K Upscale or HDR support like the PS4 and Xbox One S.

 

[TheCasualties]

Exactly why I've been holding off getting a new Switch for online. I"ll only use it for splatoon online and a few others, so a dock upgrade is fine with me. Looking forward to seeing updates about this. A little sad they aren't doing a huge upgrade to the tablet.. but whatever.

Thanks for reporting!

 

[Supercool330]

Kind of unrelated, just something I've wondered because I don't own a Switch and haven't really looked into it. Does the dock contain any additional chips or processors, or is it mainly an adapter to the TV? I know many games run at higher resolution or fps when docked but not sure if that's due to power saved from turning off the screen.

The dock has a board in it, but it's really just an adapter (much like the board in any other USB-C dock). It has a Mobility DisplayPort to HDMI converter, USB Hub, USB Power Delivery, Flash for firmware, and Cortex-M0 controller. See more info here: https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Dock

 

[Deleted User]

Kind of unrelated, just something I've wondered because I don't own a Switch and haven't really looked into it. Does the dock contain any additional chips or processors, or is it mainly an adapter to the TV? I know many games run at higher resolution or fps when docked but not sure if that's due to power saved from turning off the screen.

iirc it's only a screen adapter, charger and usb hub, you technically could run dock speeds on handheld, it's just the battery would drain horrendously fast, but dont quote me on that, my memory is iffy

 

[Supercool330]

Realtek chip that advertises itself as a "4K UHD multimedia SoC"

I'm going to guess that this is referencing RTD1395 (since those words are exactly the subtitle on the product page). Interestingly, this is somewhat similar to the Tegra X1 SOC (T210/T214) used in the Switch today. The Tegra X1 has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 at 1.9 GHz (and 4 unused Cortex-A53 that we can just ignore), and a 1000 MHz / 1267 MHz (for T210 and T214 respectively) Maxwell GPU. The RTD1395 has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.6 GHz and an ARM Mali-470 MP4 GPU which should clock in at around 2600 MHz (650 MHz per fragment processor). It's worth pointing out that this clearly isn't a replacement for Tegra X1 as the GPUs are different architectures, and the CPUs are slightly different (though both ARMv8.0).

It seems like this will either be a co-processor in the main unit, or a co-processor in the dock. Either way, I doubt games not designed to take advantage of this extension would be able to get significant benefits from it; potentially NVN could be reworked to take advantage of the extra graphics hardware, but this would be tricky. Much like the situation on 3DS / New3DS, I'm guessing only games specifically built for this architecture could take advantage of the extra CPU cores as they would have to know that they can utilize additional concurrent threads, and something would need to decide which threads to run where. My guess is the plan is to have certain higher end games that will be playable natively with the co-processor, and via the cloud without it (e.g. Control or Hitman 3). Could also be used by future games with optional "Switch Pro" enhancements.

Edit: Also, just wanted to throw in my 2 cents that this likely means absolutely nothing for 4K. The reason the chip is marketed as 4K multimedia is because it supports hardware accelerated 4K video decoding (H.265 and VP9 at 60 fps), and one of the target uses is things like Android TV. Rendering a game in 4K is a VERY different beast from decoding 4K video; considering this chipset can't even decode 4K H.264 at 60 fps, there's no way it can render 4K graphics.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

Guys didn't you read the post correctly? It's about a Realtek multimedia chip. This is not a GPU! This is about 4k videos and a new chip to decode new codecs. The chip can certainly decode Dolby Sound. Maybe it also has new WiFi.
But that has nothing to do with the performance of the console. Nintendo might clock the Mariko SoC a bit higher. Then you have 30 FPS in some games instead of 25 FPS. That's it.

If it'll make Deadly Premonition 2 playable then I might actually consider it if they did set the clock speed a bit higher. Though realistically I'm pretty sure DP2 just sucks because of poor optimization and wanting to "keep the jank" of the Director's Cut version of Deadly Premonition, even though the 360 release was fine performance wise and a bunch of people didn't play the original version so they thought being janky gave it charm.