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How the steam deck does better than Switch 2 with the official Nintendo dock

The VRR is a functionality unfortunately absent from the Nintendo Switch 2 once connected to a television via the dock. But the feature seems to be well walking once connected to another console like the steam deck.

As the Switch 2 launch approaching now record, Nintendo committed a communication failure. If the portable console supports the VRR in portable mode via the G-Sync technology from Nvidia, it does not support it once the console has been connected to a television via the dock.

The contribution of the variable refreshment rate would indeed have been a serious asset in Docké mode for titles offering variable performance. The technology allowing the gamerate of the game (the FPS) to decide the refreshment of your screen (the Hz), rather than the two are desynchronized.

If many hope that Nintendo will resolve the situation with a possible software update, it would seem that the dock is compatible with the VRR, but not with the Switch 2.

The VRR Compatible Steam Deck with the Dock Switch 2

A Reddit user named Dynamach has reported his experience on the Subreddit dedicated to Steam Deck, testing the compatibility of the Valve console with the SWITCH 2 dock.

The two are perfectly compatible if you connect the Steam Deck to the dock via a USB-C male-female extension cable. The USB-C connector of the Dock incorporating a spring sheath which retracts to the connection of the Switch 2, the operation is, it seems, a little laborious, but not impossible.

And the observation is clear: the Dock of the Switch 2, once connected to the Steam Deck on a Samsung S90c TV, supports 4K, 120 Hz, HDR and VRR, all technologies in HDMI 2.1.

As a reminder, the Switch 2 Once Dockée can only support 4K 120 Hz output without possible VRR activation. The 120 Hz is however available for 1080p definition games, such as the next Metroid Prime 4.

We could therefore say that the absence of VRR in Docké mode on Switch 2 would come from the console and not from the DisplayPort-HDMI converter which allows the video output of the device.

Several theories

While several users have been able to test and confirm the presence of the VRR, many hopes for a firmware update from Nintendo. The Japanese giant has added the Bluetooth audio support to the first switch, an update that will still have taken over 4 and a half years.

There is for the moment little information concerning the capacities of this DisplayPort converter to HDMI, but the theory which seems most likely concerns the GPU. The steam deck using a Freesync compatible AMD chip once connected to an external screen, only the brand’s GPUs could unlock the use of the VRR via the SWITCH 2 dock.

The G-Sync de Nvidia is apparently not compatible, including with the more permissive compatible G-Sync mode. The converter seems to exploit metadata that allow AMD GPUs, not Nvidia, to pass a VRR DisplayPort signal to HDMI VRR.

We stay in the field of theory and that would not surprise other compatible AMD portable consoles, such as the Asus Rog Ally or the Lenovo Legion Go.

To go further
Nintendo Switch 2 and Bluetooth Audio: latency always plays the spoilsport


amelia.fisher
amelia.fisher
Amelia writes about tech startups and the evolving digital economy, with a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship.
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