WiFi Could Be Causing Your Switch Framerate Problems
The Nintendo Switch launch was all the buzz 10-days ago. Long lineups, pre-orders selling out and inflated prices for Craigslist Switch units were the common themes a week ago. The Nintendo Switch has had a few issues since launch as evidenced by this sad video but overall the reception has been positive. We scored The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a perfect score and is reason alone to buy a Switch. If you have the console you may have noticed a number of minor framerate issues. If you have, you are not alone.
The issues are not caused by an under powered system or rushed games but rather the slow downs appear to be caused by WiFi. The slow downs happen at random and games will chug even when there’s nothing particularly remarkable going on. According to an anonymous Switch developer who reached out to GoNintendo, these random framerate issues could be caused by the system’s WiFi. The dev said:
“Experts have been puzzled [as to why] some of the worst framerate issues seem to occur so randomly, not area-specific. I believe these are not the fault of the game, but of the Switch trying to periodically auto-connect to WiFi where there is no network available. This is supposed to happen in the background, but it apparently does affect the games. I actually noticed this in FAST RMX first, where I got periodical FPS drops, while everyone was always saying that it is a perfectly locked 60 FPS experience. It wasn’t game breaking, but it made me curious.
At home I turn on WiFi only when I need it basically, so it’s not always available. I delved into the Internet settings of the Switch, found the ‘Auto Connect’ option and turned it off, and voilà, no more FPS issues! And only the ‘usual’ minor ones in Zelda: BotW in very specific (foliage intensive) areas, no more heavy random ones.”
So there you have it. Head into your settings and turn that feature off. Hopefully Nintendo releases a Switch update to address some of these issues.