Resident Evil Village launches in the Mac App Store today, and it’s been a long journey to get here.
Ever since the launch of the M1 Pro and M1 Max in the MacBook Pro last year, we’ve all been wondering about if Mac gaming was about to make a true comeback. HDR screens, 120Hz screens, great GPU performance, and even Apple’s own MetalFX upscaling tech? It’s all the ingredients you’d need for a solid gaming experience. The only thing missing was games, and with Resident Evil Village, I finally got a taste of the future of Mac gaming.
Performance
I tested out Resident Evil Village on a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro and 32GB of RAM. For these specs, Apple recommended that I play in 1080p with the “Balanced” preset — so I started there. Of course, Apple told the world that playing Resident Evil Village on a MacBook Air was also possible, but I’ll get back to that later.
For now, I played through the opening scenes of the game, seeing how the hardware could handle the graphics. The M1 Pro handled it much like an entry-level gaming laptop. At 1080p Balanced, my MacBook averaged around 60 fps (frames per second) through much of the game. Resident Evil Village isn’t an overly demanding game, though the recommended GPU is a GTX 1070. Of course, frame rates will vary from scene-to-scene, and there were times when frame rates dipped under 60 fps. But hey, it’s quite close to the kind an RTX 3050 Ti-powered gaming laptop. That alone is pretty impressive as a comparison.
The real miracle is the way the MacBook Pro handles the heat. All throughout, the MacBook Pro stayed almost completely silent, its fans hardly spinning. The chassis did get warm, of course, but the keyboard and wrist rests stay comfortable. It’s in a different league compared to something like the Razer Blade 15. That’s standard for the MacBook Pro, but it’s incredible to see with a AAA game running on it.
Of course, there’s room for more with the MacBook Pro. It has a 120Hz refresh rate, high-resolution screen, after all. And that’s where Apple’s MetalFX upscaling tech comes in — at least, in theory.
MetalFX upscaling
MetalFX Off, Balanced, and Performance
These days, the upscaling tech used by Nvidia, AMD, and even Intel are as important as the raw performance of the GPUs themselves. That’s even more true on laptops or lower-end PCs, from which you’re trying to get every extra frame possible. These upscaling features allows the MetalFX upscaling is Apple’s own version of this, of course, and this is our first glimpse at seeing what it can do. You’ll find the setting right next to the graphics settings in the menu, and you’re given three options: Off, Quality, and Performance.
MetalFX upscaling mode comparison
This is similar to what you get in other upscaling features, such as AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS.
With MetalFX, though, the Performance setting results in some a serious dip in quality. It appears to be even more noticeable in lower resolutions, which is unfortunate. You certainly can play like this, especially if you were on, say, a MacBook Air. In that case, it might be necessary. But in the case of playing on something like an M1 Pro, the performance …….