Cyberpunk 2077 on Nintendo Switch 2 is the first game with officially confirmed Nvidia DLSS support
As the world waits with bated breath for the launch of Nintendo Switch 2, one of the most ambitious games to come to the console, CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077, continues to intrigue. Thanks to the game's demo at the console's recent presentation tour, Digital Foundry had the opportunity to get a first-hand look at the port. And while the first impressions are already known and are mostly positive, many questions remained unanswered. Does Nvidia's port use DLSS? Now CDPR has officially confirmed that it does, making Cyberpunk 2077 the first known Switch 2 game to use the machine learning-based scaling technology.
Here's What We Know
"We're using the version of DLSS available for Nintendo Switch 2 hardware running on Nvidia Tensor Cores," the studio said. The game uses DLSS in all four modes: portable and stationary, as well as in the "performance" and "quality" options for each of them.
DLSS was considered by many to be a kind of "magic wand". In an era when developers are raising the bar for visual technologies to a new level, it is becoming increasingly difficult to run games in full native resolution with stable performance. Therefore, rendering at a lower resolution and then scaling is a common practice. These scaling techniques range from simple bilinear scaling to more advanced ones, such as TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) scaling, which uses information from previous frames to improve detail.
DLSS is a form of TAA scaling, but with a significant difference. By sending a lower-resolution frame along with the history of previous frames and other data such as motion vectors, a neural network is used to reconstruct the image. Since the Switch 2 GPU includes tensor cores for machine learning, there is no reason why any DLSS technology cannot be used on this hybrid console. The only caveat is the computational cost associated with its use.
CD Projekt RED has also confirmed that the current goal for the Switch 2 version of the game is to provide different graphical modes - quality and performance switches for both portable and stationary modes. When connected to a TV, the "quality" mode will be available at 30 frames per second and the "performance" mode at 40 frames per second. The latter is likely to work only at a TV refresh rate of 120 Hz.
If performance is stable, both modes should look smooth, with the 40fps mode falling somewhere between 30 and 60fps in terms of smoothness. Both modes use a 1080p output resolution with dynamic resolution scaling enabled in conjunction with DLSS.
The portable mode is slightly different at this point, which is quite logical due to the lower system performance. In this case, the Quality mode also outputs 1080p images using DLSS and dynamic resolution scaling, again aiming for 30 frames per second. In Performance mode, the output resolution is reduced to 720p, with the console screen running at 120Hz at 40fps.
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will be available on Switch 2 on 5 June 2025.
Source: Eurogamer
