Nintendo Switch Release Date, Latest News: Is The Gaming Console Slower Than PS4 & Xbox One? CPU Performance Consistent But GPU Falters In Handheld Mode!

Game enthusiasts and Nintendo fans are quite excited about the reveal and release of the upcoming Nintendo Switch, a device which has been in news since the time it was announced. If tech reports are to be believed, the Nintendo Switch is actually going to be slower than the PS4 and Xbox One.

Even worse, there is a great difference in the performance of Nintendo Switch when it is used as a home console and a handheld device. We are not sure about when the Nintendo Switch will be actually released. However, the specifications have been released for the public and the performance can be assessed from different reports submitted by experts.

"As many have speculated, the new Nintendo hardware does indeed feature two performance configurations - and the console is categorically not as capable in mobile form, compared to its prowess when docked and attached to an HDTV," noted Richard Leadbetter from Digital Foundry.

"And we can confirm that there is no second GPU or additional hardware in the dock itself regardless of the intriguing patents that Nintendo has filed suggesting that there might be. With battery life and power throughput no longer an issue, the docked Switch simply allows the GPU to run much faster. And to put it simply, there is a night and day difference here," He added.

Leadbetter further explained about the GPU and CPU clock speeds. The CPU speed of Nintendo Switch will remain at 1020MHz irrespective of the mode it is being used in. The machine runs at 1600MHz when it is docked, quite similar to a Tegra X1. However, the performance drops to 1331MHz when it is undocked. The CPU performance is nothing spectacular but it is the GPU that catches the attention for the worst.

Nintendo Switch doesn't run at Tegra X1's full potential. Clock-speeds are locked here at 768MHz, considerably lower than the 1GHz found in Shield Android TV, but the big surprise from our perspective was the extent to which Nintendo has down-clocked the GPU to hit its thermal and battery life targets. That's not a typo: it really is 307.2MHz - meaning that in portable mode, Switch runs at exactly 40 percent of the clock-speed of the fully docked device," reads Leadbetter's post. This is the latest news and analysis for Nintendo Switch.

This performance can even degrade further if the developers choose to do the same before the Nintendo Switch release. All of this analysis puts Nintendo Switch behind PS4 and Xbox One, at least in theory. We sure hope that the games make up for this more of a lackluster performance on behalf of Nintendo. All will be revealed soon enough in the upcoming January 12-13 event.

Stay tuned to SWR for more updates and latest news on Nintendo Switch release date, specs and price details.