Apple has just unveiled the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which comes equipped with the A18 Pro, the company's most potent chip so far. This new SoC is making waves in the premium smartphone market, showcasing remarkable performance in single-core tasks. Its efficiency also sets it apart from other competitors.
Gaming Performance Insights
In a recent video featuring MrMacRight, the gaming strengths of the A18 Pro were showcased. He compared it with the iPhone 15 Pro, which runs on the A17 Pro, across several renowned gaming titles. Some of the games tested included Assassin's Creed Mirage, Death Stranding, and Resident Evil 4. The evaluation not only focused on performance but also looked at various factors like frame rate stability, thermal management, and memory usage.
Detailed Game Tests
When it came to Assassin's Creed Mirage by Ubisoft, the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro delivered a stable 30 FPS on high settings, with few frame drops, which is a major step forward compared to the previous model that struggled in demanding scenes. The Metal HUD displayed that the game used around 5.3 GB of RAM, while the iPhone itself maintained a temperature of 44.3 C, which is over 5 degrees cooler than the iPhone 15 Pro.
Moving on to Death Stranding, the iPhone 16 Pro continued to impress. It not only outperformed the earlier model but also ran cooler. When set to a 60 FPS cap with lower graphics, the iPhone 16 Pro could achieve around 40 FPS, experiencing some drops in more intense parts. Apple's revamped thermal design seems to be working effectively, showing real gains in performance.
Performance Challenges
There's not much to critique about Resident Evil 4, as the iPhone 16 Pro kept up its reputation for better performance and lower heat. However, issues arose with Resident Evil Village, where both the iPhone 16 Pro and 15 Pro crashed when memory usage hit 6 GB, highlighting a demand for more memory in future models. Nevertheless, the iPhone 16 Pro managed to outpace its predecessor by roughly 10 FPS, although both devices eventually reached their thermal limits.
In Alien: Isolation, which has recently been optimized for the Metal 3 API, the iPhone 16 Pro Max kept a solid 60 FPS throughout most of the gameplay, with memory usage staying under 2 GB. Similarly, Wreckfest from HandyGames ran smoothly with the A18 Pro, achieving a stable 60 FPS at max settings while only using 1.5 GB of memory, and temperatures were kept at a cool 37.6C.
MrMacRight via YouTube