Let’s get straight to the point – Switch is indeed evolving and in select scenarios, Nintendo’s hardware is becoming more powerful than it was at launch. Recent stories talking about a ‘boost mode’ of sorts for the console hybrid are perhaps a touch inaccurate, but after investigating a trio of recent releases, it’s now confirmed that Nintendo is selectively overclocking its hardware – or more precisely, opening up new options for developers to beef up portable performance while at the same time playing with thermal management and CPU clocks to speed up loading times.
Way back in December 2016, Digital Foundry revealed the clock speed configurations Nintendo settled upon for Switch – and there was some concern. The Tegra X1 processor’s specs were a known quantity having debuted in 2015 in Nvidia’s Shield Android TV, and what was clear was that the platform holder was being somewhat conservative. CPU clocks were limited to just 1020MHz, while the docked GPU frequency was locked to 768MHz – both significantly slower than Shield. The situation was even more concerning in mobile mode, where the GPU downclocked to just 307.2MHz – though pre-launch, Nintendo added a beefier 384MHz mode to the mix.
Recent developments have spiced up the situation somewhat, with further options open to game makers. In select circumstances, Switch’s CPU now boosts temporarily to 1785MHz, while the handheld modes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey and Mortal Kombat 11 now see the GPU clocks increase to 460MHz – a good 20 per cent uplift in frequency over the 384MHz mode, and a 50 per cent improvement over the original 307.2MHz option. In addition to this, there’s some evidence to suggest that some titles may even have access to a dynamic GPU frequency mode that adjusts according to load.
Mario and Zelda actually use two of these new enhancements in concert and it’s worth explaining how the CPU boost in particular works. Essentially, it’s used exclusively for improving loading times. Two elements define how long – or how short – any given load is: the performance of the storage in bringing data into memory and the speed of the CPU in decompressing the data the system receives (storage space is at a premium, so data is compressed to save space). Using an exploited Switch running frequency management and monitoring software (SysClk) I was able to see the Nintendo hardware boot Mario and Zelda with CPU clocks at 1785MHz, before throttling back to the standard 1020MHz once the load was complete.
Upping CPU frequency by 75 per cent is a pretty extreme enhancement, but deploying the 1785MHz clock for loading alone is inspired. The most power hungry component of the Tegra X1 processor is undoubtedly the Nvidia Maxwell graphics hardware, but typically, when games are loading, GPU utilisation barely registers. The demands on the battery and thermal management slack off at this point, meaning that there’s plenty of overhead here for the CPU to be temporarily ramped up to its maximum frequency. Booting Super Mario Odyssey took 28 seconds before the latest patch (where I confirmed CPU clocks to be locked at 1020MHz), whereas the latest version with the ‘boost’ code applied loads the game in 20 seconds – a 29 per cent decrease. The dynamic adjustment in CPU clocks also extends to in-game loading too, but the loading times here only gain a second or two over the unpatched code.