The State of Mac Gaming: An Update on the Apple M3 Lineup and Implications For Games, Apps, and Game Developers
The new 24-inch iMac is getting an M3-flavored upgrade that Apple says offers two times faster performance than its M1-equipped predecessor. Along with the new chip, the refreshed iMac features a 4.5K Retina display with more than 1 billion colors, support for Wi-Fi 6E, and a 1080p webcam.
Apple claims the M3 lineup offers significant speed improvements over its previous chips in graphics rendering, core CPU functions, and machine intelligence tasks. Of course, we’ll have to put each chip through its paces to determine how noticeable these improvements are.
It’s not surprising that the internals for these new models were the focus of the redesign of the MacBook Pro two years ago. In addition to the new chipsets, there are a few minor changes like a brighter screen and improved battery life. There are two MacBook Pro sizes that pack displays that are 20 percent brighter. Apple also claims up to 22 hours of battery life, depending on the configuration.
How this all translates into the state of gaming on the Mac is unclear, but improved performance, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and a new Dynamic Caching feature all sound like big benefits to game developers and potential M3 Mac owners. We’re still waiting for more games on the Mac. This year Apple encouraged developers to bring Windows games to their Macs.
The M3 chip has a few new features. Apple calls this feature dynamic caching, it allows the processor to allocate memory dynamically, if needed or not, instead of having to limit how much memory is used in a particular task. The result is a more efficient use of resources. The other new features—ray tracing and mesh shading—are put to use in graphics-intensive games and apps. Ray tracing can make it more accurate to show lighting elements like reflections and shadows. Hardware-accelerated mesh shading helps visually elaborate scenes within games appear smoother and without skips.
The built in support for hardware-based ray tracing on Apple M3 chips will allow game developers to make better shadows and reflections, which are usually only found on the latest consoles. Hardware-accelrated mesh shading makes it more likely for developers to improve game scenes.
The Touch Bar vs. the iMac: Pre-Ordering now and getting ready for the return of the Touch Bar?
The Touch Bar model will be discontinued, which means it will be all physical keys. There are some drawbacks to this entry-level model, though: it features a meager 8GB of RAM and comes in just silver and space gray variations — the black color is exclusive to the higher-end MacBook Pros. The device is available to pre-order today and goes on sale on November 7th.
Both laptops feature a Mini LED display, a 1080p camera, a six-speaker sound system, 22 hours of battery life, and up to 128GB of RAM. They’re also available in a space black finish with a new coating that’s supposed to help reduce fingerprints as well as a silver option.
iMacs are available with a eight-core or 10-core chip, and can be purchased for as little as $1,299. It will be available for pre-order on November 7th.
The iMac has a variety of colors including green, yellow, orange, purple, blue, and silver. There are accessories for the iMac that feature the same color as the computer.
Apple’s “Scary Fast” showcase has come to a close. During the launch event, Apple took the wraps off of some brand-new Macs that come equipped with the latest version of the company’s in-house chip.
So, what’s the difference between each version of the next-generation chipsets? The entry-level M3 packs an 8-core CPU and up to 10-core GPU with up to 24 gigabytes of unified memory. The next step is the M3 Pro with a 12-core version of the processor, 18-core version of the processor, and up to 36 gigabytes of unified memory. The most powerful of them all is the M3 Max with an 16-core CPU, a whopping 40-core GPU, and support for up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory.
The three new chips were built on a 3-nanometer process, which has been shown to improve both speed and power efficiency.