Genshin Impact recently added Apple’s upscaler MetalFX to the in-game visual settings, allowing supported devices such as the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max to get higher performance from the resource-intensive title. When running the game on Apple’s latest and greatest flagship, one user found some interesting results with the upscaler enabled, notably higher power consumption and increased frame drops, suggesting that future updates will be necessary to optimize the game.
Tests show that with the MetalFX enabled, Genshin Impact looks much cleaner on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but with other drawbacks
A Weibo account machine translated to ‘Novice evaluation’ posted performance results of the iPhone 15 Pro Max running Genshin Impact. Previously, we reported that the regular iPhone 15 Pro suffered from massive stuttering and frame drop issues with the game running at maximum settings, so enabling MetalFX might have been helpful. However, the latest results below show that while the game looks significantly better, it is all for naught if the performance increase or improvement is not there.
With the upscaler running, the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s framerate drops to 58.7FPS, and with MetalFX disabled, it records a framerate of 59.4FPS with a total power draw of 4.2W and temperature of 46.3 degrees Celcius. With MetalFX enabled, there are a series of drawbacks, such as a power increase of 0.6W and a temperature that goes up to 48.1 degrees Celcius. While the technology works to improve the image quality compared to the native resolution, many optimizations are required.
The A17 Pro running in the iPhone 15 Pro Max is a capable SoC, despite its shortcomings, as one demonstration shows that the silicon can play Resident Evil Village at a decent framerate while connected to an external monitor. It was concluded that the overheating of both flagships is in no way associated with Apple’s latest 3nm chipset, but the titanium chassis and lackluster cooling system are to be blamed. Hopefully, Apple will push out a software update to tame these thermals, and then we will report on these performance results.
For the moment, if enabling MetalFX while running Genshin Impact does not improve the performance for any iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max owners, we recommend turning it off and investing in an external cooling fan to stabilize performance and temperatures. We have compiled a list of the best external coolers for Apple’s two flagships, so remember to check that out.
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