Why That Brief Look at Mario Kart 9 Suggests Nintendo Switch 2 Is ‘Significantly More Powerful’ Than the Original — According to a Developer

An indie developer familiar with making games for the original Switch has explained why that brief look at Mario Kart 9 suggests the Switch 2 is “significantly more powerful.”

The Nintendo Switch 2’s grand hardware reveal last week swept many off of their feet. However, one thing that Nintendo has been suspiciously quiet about is the technical prowess of its new handheld. While we have clear upgrades like new Joy-Cons, a redesigned kickstand, and a larger form factor, we still have no official word on just how powerful the Switch 2 is.

But does the brief glimpse at Mario Kart 9 in the reveal video provide clues? In a new YouTube video (via GamesRadar), indie developer Jerrel Dulay of Sungrand Studios said that he expects the Switch 2 to be much more powerful than the original console. Dulay is credited as being one of the last developers to work on titles for the Wii U and 3DS, and is intimately familiar with Nintendo hardware.

Dulay explained that the new Mario Kart footage in the Switch 2 trailer could give us a glimpse at exactly what the Switch 2 may be capable of. He first noted the presence of “physically-based shaders” on cars and other textures. These shaders can be applied to objects and can be affected by reflections, lighting, or other effects.

In late 2023, Digital Foundry published an extensive report on the Switch 2’s new hardware, which allegedly includes the Nvidia T239 ARM mobile chip. The T239 chip reportedly inside the Switch 2 is projected to have 1536 CUDA Cores (these cores can process shaders), 40% fewer than the desktop variant of the RTX 3050 GPU, which is on the same 8nm Nvidia Ampere architecture. This was corroborated by the Switch 2’s motherboard leaks, which showed a potential 8nm chip.

The original Nintendo Switch’s Tegra X1 chip possessed just 256 CUDA cores, marking a 500% increase in pure availability of CUDA core count alone.

“Every single piece of geometry I see here is using physically-based rendering for the shaders,” Dulay explained. He noted that using complex shaders on the original Nintendo Switch was demanding for the hardware, and using many of them could cause framerates to plummet. Dulay added that the Mario Kart footage also shows off additional material reflections from the ground, his face, and more.

Dulay pointed to the high-resolution ground textures used throughout the footage, saying: “ground textures, because they take up so much space, they are something that will have to be high-resolution.” He went on to explain how high-resolution textures also demand available RAM.

The original Nintendo Switch has just 4GB of RAM to run games and its OS, whereas the Nintendo Switch 2 is rumored to have 12GB of RAM. The Switch 2 motherboard leak showed off two SK Hynix LPDDR5 modules, which could offer up to 12GB of RAM, with each chip offering 6GB each.

We currently don’t know the specific speed of the RAM modules, which could offer significant increases in efficiency compared to the original Switch’s 1600MHz while docked. A similar part from RAM manufacturer SK Hynix can run at speeds up to 7500MHz, increasing the amount of available bandwidth for the RAM pool significantly.

This means that things such as texture loading could be much faster, allowing for the new Mario Kart to use high-resolution textures. “It’s not that they’re just high-resolution, but there’s a high number of unique textures being used,” Dulay added. The potential higher memory transfer rate paired with the pure RAM storage increase could lead to significantly prettier Switch 2 titles.

Dulay further stated that the Mario Kart teaser also includes “true volumetric lighting,” which is taxing for any GPU to run. “It takes into account the distance, the height, you can have certain areas be more dense, you can have light rays.”

According to Dulay, the Switch 2’s display of volumetric lighting in the new Mario Kart title is indicative of just how powerful the Switch 2 could be: “it tells me that the Switch 2 is significantly more powerful, because they want these games running at 60 frames a second.”

“This is a massive deal, this is the most important part of the reveal trailer to me,” Dulay further commented, explaining that implementing volumetric lighting was a significant challenge for developers on the original Nintendo Switch. He also noted the presence of shadows at far distances in the trailer. “Shadows are quite expensive to calculate and draw,” he said, as developers on the original Switch needed to cull the level of detail distances at which shadows were drawn.

However, with the compounding of the Switch 2’s power through the use of its CUDA cores, RAM capacity, and speed, it seems like those difficulties have been significantly reduced thanks to the new console’s raw power.

Dulay pointed out how the number of textures onscreen, high poly-count characters, in addition to the real-time cloth physics on the flagpoles demonstrate just how much of a leap in power the Switch 2 will be for developers used to making games on Nintendo’s 2017 console.

As we wait for more details and footage from the Nintendo Switch 2, Dulay’s video offers a unique insight into what you should expect in terms of graphical power from the new Nintendo console. Nintendo is scheduled to show off more about Switch 2 in a dedicated Direct in April. Until then, be sure to catch all of IGN’s Switch 2 coverage right here.

Image credit: YouTube: Sungrand Studios

Sayem is a freelancer based in the UK, covering tech & hardware. You can get in touch with him at @sayem.zone on Bluesky.