The Nintendo Switch can run games at 1080p 60 FPS but whether or not those specifications are met depends on the developer of the game and how well it is optimized. It is powered by the Nvidia Tegra X1 chip which is not available in the PC space. In this article, we are going to go over what the Nintendo Switch equivalent graphics card is.
What graphics card is comparable to the Nintendo Switch? The closest off off-the-shelf graphics card to the Nintendo Switch GPU is the GTX 1650 Graphics card from Nvidia which has a throughput of 3 TFLOPs. If you want similar performance to a Nintendo Switch this is a good graphics card to go for however you do have to realise that PC games may not be optimised as well as their Switch counterparts.
Teraflop To Teraflop Comparison
The Nintendo Switch has a throughput of 1 Teraflop but the performance changes depending on whether you are using it docked or in hand-held mode. The clock speed of the graphics unit in docked mode is 768 MHz but once you remove it from the dock, the clock speed drops to 307.2 MHz. When in handheld mode, the throughput of the device reduces to about half as well. That is why when the console is used in handheld mode the resolution of games usually drops from 1080p to 720p.
While this performance is not going to beat the new Xbox or PlayStation, it is interesting to see that the console can run games such as The Witcher 3, Skyrim, and Doom.
The Nvidia Tegra X1 chip is custom and is not available for PCs. We do know that the Tegra X1 has 256 CUDA cores and the same is true for the Nvidia GeForce 830M. The 830M performs similarly to the GeForce 9800 GTX. But this is not a fair comparison. The graphics card has a throughput of 432.1 Gflops.
Real-World Performance
While the GeForce 9800 GTX is similar to the Nvidia Tegra X1 found in the Nintendo Switch in hand-held mode, it does not perform the same. It should be noted that the Nintendo Switch operating system is fairly simple as compared to Windows, which is capable of doing much more than just gaming.
Furthermore, games are specially optimized for the hardware inside the Nintendo Switch so that they run well on the device. Optimizing games for a wide variety of graphics cards and CPUs on PC is not as simple.
In order to get similar performance on PC, you will need a more powerful graphics card such as the GTX 1050 or the more recent GTX 1650. The Nvidia GTX 1650 has a throughput of 3 Tflops and can boost to around 1665 MHz. The exact speed varies from variant to variant. Versions with better coolers will have higher clock speeds as a rule of thumb. It also features 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. There is a GDDR6 variant that comes with faster memory but it does have a lower boost clock in general.
While you could run games using the GeForce 9800 GTX, it is a very old graphics card which is why we do not recommend doing that. With modern cards, you can take advantage of recently released features as well as efficient architectures.
Recommended Graphics Cards
The following are the graphics cards that we can recommend to run games at 1080p 60 FPS on PC.
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1650 OC
The graphics card comes with 4GB of GDDR6 memory and a boost to 1620 MHz. The graphics card is overclocked out of the box so you get slightly better performance as compared to slock speeds. The graphics card has a single fan which keeps the temperature in check and the compact design is ideal for small form-factor gaming PC builds.
The graphics card is based on the recent Turing architecture and is able to output 4K. For output, you get a single HDMI 2.0 port, DP 1.4, and Dual DVI-D ports. As this is a budget graphics card, it does not come with RGB lighting or a backplate.
XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 6600 CORE
On the AMD side of things, we can recommend the RX 6600. This graphics card targets 1080p 60 FPS which is possible in pretty much any game with this graphics card. The graphics card has a very unique design and is one of the best-looking RX 6600 graphics cards in my opinion.
The graphics card uses the new AMD RDNA2 architecture and comes with 8 GB of GDDR6. The graphics card has a boost clock speed of 2491 MHz and comes with a pair of fans to keep the thermals in check. The graphics card does not come with RGB lighting but it does have a backplate.
ASUS TUF GeForce GTX 1650 Super OC Edition
Asus is known for making some of the best gaming products on the market and the TUF GeForce GTX 1650 Super OC Edition is no different. It offers more power than the GTX 1650 and comes with a dual-fan cooler to keep it cool when under load.
The graphics card features 1280 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR6 memory, and a boost clock speed of 1800 MHz. The stealthy color scheme is going to ensure that your card blends in well with the rest of your build. The graphics card does not come with RGB lighting but it does have a backplate. For output, you get a single HDMI 2.0 port, DP 1.4, and Dual DVI-D port
These are the graphics cards that you can use to get 1080p 60 FPS in games on PC. These should give you a much better performance than a Nintendo Switch. However, a lot of the popular Nintendo Switch games are specifically optimized for the Nintendo Switch as that is their main platform. This allows these games to get much better performance on a Switch vs potentially being emulated on one of the graphics cards above.
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