A new dawn for Mac gaming? Apple's M4 Mac mini uses hardware-accelerated ray tracing

Date:
Tue, 05 Nov 2024 13:46:48 +0000

Description:
While the ever-growing game library on Mac devices was convincing enough, the new M4 Mac minis capabilities reinforces the idea that Apple is taking gaming seriously this generation.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Apple
is introducing hardware-accelerated ray tracing on the Mac mini The M4 Mac minis base model will use 16GB of unified memory This is Apple's best-value desktop PC, starting at $599

Apples big reveal of the M4 chips last week promised significant enhancements across the board for its Mac devices, and the M4 Mac mini could get one of
the biggest upgrades - a feature called hardware-accelerated ray tracing for gaming.

The Cupertino company has considered gaming on previous Apple Silicon Macs, but the last base model M2 Mac mini only utilized 8GB of unified memory (similar to base M2 and M3 models of the MacBook Pro), and because this
memory is shared between system memory and video memory (hence being called unified) it meant those chips couldnt handle advanced graphics like ray tracing. However, the base model of the M4 Mac mini starting at $599 (599 / AU$999) comes with 16GB of unified memory.

Its no wonder Apple is looking to boost its Macs gaming credentials, as the gaming library for Macs is continuing to grow , and the mention of hardware-accelerated ray tracing for games like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Control (which can be found on the official Mac mini page ), suggests it could finally be time for Apple to take a serious step into the gaming PC market (potentially consoles too). Could the pricing of the M4 Mac mini provide competition for Windows gaming PCs?

Considering its small size, gaming capability claims from Apple, and the pricing of the M4 Mac mini, I believe this will certainly shake things up in the desktop gaming PC market. While going toe-to-toe with the best gaming PCs available is unlikely, the $599 (599 / AU$999) price is a steal considering the performance enhancements present within the M4 chip.

The prices of GPUs (specifically Nvidias high-end GPUs) leave some gaming experiences out of reach for many PC gamers. With the M4 chip, youll have the luxury of a 10-core CPU and GPU and the aforementioned 16GB of unified memory (which some pre-built gaming PCs dont have).

This alongside Apples move to bring more popular games to Mac devices like
the Resident Evil 4 remake and Cyberpunk 2077 , shows us that gaming is
slowly but surely becoming a strong selling point for the company, and the M4 Mac mini appears to be the next big step in the right direction You might
also like... Apple is adding 3 more useful upgrades to your iPhone with iOS 18.2 including a Camera Control boost Your Macs menu bar will finally get a weather widget in macOS Sequoia 15.2 plus these Apple Intelligence features Apples M4 Macs are here, but youll need to install a quick macOS Sequoia update first to unlock all the Apple Intelligence goodness



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/macs/a-new-dawn-for-mac-gaming-apples-m4-m ac-mini-uses-hardware-accelerated-ray-tracing


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