To push framerate in games on low and high-end machines, Apple introduced its upscaler called MetalFX to rival NVIDIA’s and AMD’s solutions. We expect this technology to improve in the future when more games arrive for various compatible devices, but the latest comparison involving Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 Remake shows that there is a ton of work to be done as far as improving visual quality.
Biggest visual quality downgrade can be seen in the protagonist’s hair, but it is possible that higher resolution alleviates this issue
Playing on the 1080p resolution, the YouTube channel MrMacRightPlus got its hands on the upgraded version of the M4 Mac mini, which features 16GB of unified RAM and 512GB of internal storage. Jumping straight to the upscaling comparison, which displayed ‘Balanced’ quality settings, we noticed that the image with Apple’s MetalFX upscaling turned on showed worse image quality, particularly around Leon Kennedy’s hair, which appears to have various artifacts.
The image quality without MetalFX enabled produces a cleaner result but at the expense of a reduced framerate. In fact, with the M4 running Resident Evil 4 Remake at 1080p with MetalFX enabled, we witness a whopping 44 percent boost in the framerate, along with a reduction in memory consumption, not that the Mac mini was running low on RAM in the first place.
It is possible that at the 1080p resolution, the upscaler does not have sufficient imaging data to downscale the image and then upscale properly, but at higher resolutions, the artifacts present on the hair possibly get alleviated. For that to happen, we will require someone to run the same game at the 1440p resolution and then upload a comparison. Regardless, it is still pretty impressive what the M4 can achieve, showing that Apple is finally getting serious about the gaming market.
However, as far as upscaling improvements go, Apple is playing catch-up with NVIDIA because the latter’s DLSS technology can often look better than the resolution. That is thanks to the dedicated Tensor cores present in RTX GPUs, which allow them to render a cleaner image. Hopefully, Apple will introduce similar cores to its future chipsets, and that is when the competition gets all fired up.
News Source: MrMacRightPlus
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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