Apple included the new A17 Pro chip, the most powerful mobile processor, in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models it introduced the other day. Apple A17 Pro has powerful processor features as well as advanced GPU or graphics capabilities. These include features such as ray tracing and MetalFX upscaling. Based on this muscle power, Apple also officially announced the console games that will come to the iPhone 15 Pro family.

Console games coming to iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max

Apple has partnered with Ubisoft and Capcom to bring AAA experiences like Resident Evil IV Remake and Resident Evil VIII Village to iPhone gamers by the end of this year. Death Stranding is also planned to be released for iPhone 15 Pro series smartphones this year. According to Apple’s official statement

Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4 and Death Stranding are coming to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max later this year. Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be available in the first half of 2024. Apple also showed off The Division: Resurgence and Gensin Impact games. These productions will also come to iPhone 15 Pro models in 2024.

Why is Apple A17 Pro special?

Apple A17 Pro features a total 6-core CPU and a new Apple-designed shader architecture that offers up to 20 percent higher performance than the previous generation. We see that other important improvements have been made in the efficiency and mesh shading sections. While the 16-core neural processing unit on the chip can perform up to 35 trillion operations per second, AV1 support is also available locally.

On the GPU side, Apple says it has made the biggest change ever. The GPU on the A17 Pro has six cores and is up to 20 percent faster than the previous model. The GPU enables mesh shading, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and more. Ray tracing runs four times faster than the software-based option on the A16 Bionic, while the neural processing unit also supports the graphics unit for upscaling.

Before continuing with the A17 Pro, it is necessary to open a parenthesis. Samsung introduced its own hardware-accelerated ray tracing solution in the Galaxy S23 series at the beginning of this year. The Galaxy S23 series used AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture for ray tracing and graphics capabilities. We can see the switch to RDNA 3 in the Galaxy S24 family.

Continuing, the A17 Pro offers 4 times faster performance in ray tracing applications. Apple showed a software-based and hardware-accelerated comparison demo. While the software-based solution remained below 10 FPS, the hardware-accelerated ray tracing demo consistently delivered 30 FPS.

Apple also announced support for the best controllers on the market, like the PS5’s Dual-Sense. Additionally, an important feature coming to Apple iPhone 15 Pro will be MetalFX upgrade support. Upscaling technologies have been widely adopted in the PC and console space. Apple claims that by using MetalFX, the iPhone 15 Pro series will not only run faster but also consume lower power, resulting in high frame rates in games. This will also make a positive contribution to battery life.

MetalFX upscaling technology uses both GPU cores and Neural Engine cores, which include 16 cores with up to 2x the performance of the previous generation with up to 35 TOPs of nominal AI processing power. When all these come together, the A17 Pro is already the most powerful in the smartphone world. Let’s see how the competition will take shape.