An indie game developer with extensive experience creating Switch titles has offered compelling evidence suggesting the Switch 2 boasts significantly enhanced processing power. This conclusion stems from a close analysis of the recently unveiled Mario Kart 9 trailer.
Nintendo's official Switch 2 reveal, while impressive, remained notably vague regarding the console's technical capabilities. While upgrades to the Joy-Cons, kickstand, and overall design are evident, concrete details about raw power are scarce.
Jerrel Dulay of Sungrand Studios, a developer with a proven track record on Wii U and 3DS titles, presented his analysis in a YouTube video. He highlights several graphical features in the Mario Kart 9 footage as indicators of a substantial power increase.
Mario Kart 9: A Graphical Deep Dive
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Dulay points to the utilization of physically-based shaders, impacting reflections and lighting effects on characters and environments. He emphasizes that rendering such complex shaders on the original Switch was extremely resource-intensive, often resulting in significant frame rate drops. The Mario Kart 9 footage, however, showcases these effects seamlessly.
Further supporting his claims, Dulay cites Digital Foundry's report suggesting the Switch 2 incorporates the Nvidia T239 ARM mobile chip, boasting a projected 1536 CUDA cores—a significant jump from the original Switch's Tegra X1 with only 256 CUDA cores. This aligns with leaked Switch 2 motherboard images indicating an 8nm chip.
The trailer also exhibits high-resolution ground textures and numerous unique textures, demanding substantial RAM. Rumors point to the Switch 2 featuring 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM (compared to the original's 4GB), potentially running at speeds up to 7500MHz. This increased RAM capacity and speed would drastically improve texture loading times and overall performance.
Dulay also highlights the presence of volumetric lighting and far-distance shadows, both computationally expensive graphical elements that were challenging to implement on the original Switch. The smooth rendering of these effects in the Mario Kart 9 trailer strongly suggests a considerable performance boost. Finally, the high polygon count of characters and real-time cloth physics on the flags further solidify this assessment.
While awaiting Nintendo's official April Direct for further details, Dulay's analysis provides a valuable perspective on the Switch 2's potential graphical capabilities, hinting at a major leap forward in processing power.
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