macOS Monterey to Offer Smoother Gameplay With Support for Adaptive-Sync Displays on Newer Macs

Friday June 11, 2021 7:13 am PDT by Joe Rossignol

As part of WWDC this week, Apple revealed that newer Macs will be gaining support for Adaptive-Sync external displays with variable refresh rates in macOS Monterey.

macos monterey adaptive sync displays recenter
Apple says Adaptive-Sync displays will be supported on any Mac with Apple silicon, like the M1 chip, as well as "many" recent Intel-based Macs. When a supported Adaptive-Sync display is connected to a compatible Mac, users will be able to enable Adaptive-Sync mode by selecting a new variable refresh rate option in System Preferences > Displays.

Adaptive-Sync is a feature of the DisplayPort 1.2a specification, and it serves as the foundation of popular variable refresh rate display technologies like AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync, which will now be supported on newer Macs.

Macs gaining support for Adaptive-Sync displays will be particularly beneficial to gamers, as these displays can actively adjust their refresh rate to match a game's frame rate, providing smoother, lower-latency gameplay. Apps or games must be running in full-screen mode on macOS Monterey for Adaptive-Sync mode to function, according to Apple.

macOS Monterey is available now in beta for developers, with a public beta to follow in July. The software update will be released in the fall.

Related Roundup: macOS Monterey

Related Forum: macOS Monterey

Top Rated Comments

Freeangel1

5 days ago at 07:17 am

Is there gonna be a surge in Mac games with Apple Silicon? Because there are not many out there now.
And you just lost the ability to install Windows on an M1 Chip Machine. Thats where all the games are at.

Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)

blazerunner

5 days ago at 07:18 am

There are no AAA games for Mac (Battlefield, Cyberpunk, COD, etc). It's a nice feature.... but, pointless.

Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)

l0stl0rd

5 days ago at 07:29 am

not sure what the point is unless developers make games.

The M1 is mediocre with gtx 1060 like performance.

This is only worth it if we get AAA games and an M1x with like 3070-3080 performance.

Probably better off to buy a PS5 if I could find one lol.

Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)

cmaier

5 days ago at 07:20 am

Is there gonna be a surge in Mac games with Apple Silicon? Because there are not many out there now.
And you just lost the ability to install Windows on an M1 Chip Machine. Thats where all the games are at.

There may be. Now you can write a game for mac and have a much larger potential audience than before (both because mac sales have increased, and because your game can also run on recent iPads if you code it right)

Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)

killramos

5 days ago at 07:25 am

There are no AAA games for Mac (Battlefield, Cyberpunk, COD, etc). It's a nice feature.... but, pointless.

All the people who keep being “blown away” by M1 would be turned a hilarious shade of purple at the dismal FPS they would get on M1 hardware compared to what true dedicated graphics on PC is able to generate.

this will make for a great angry birds experience though!

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

blazerunner

5 days ago at 08:54 am

There are/were... for example, Tomb Raider (save for the 3rd) is available. Older ones especially... Borderlands 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Bioshock, Guild Wars 2, among others... it's dried up again as of late.

But to that point, if they want to see more of them... open up some GPU support. The M1 smokes Intel Integrated Graphics, but that's barely setting the bar above floor level and isn't a good long term solution. The move to ARM instructions should be their opportunity to jump into the field and court some development. Maybe kiss and make up with Nvidia, since they control ARM itself now -- that might hasten some development for actual drivers on ARM instead of the current home-brew ones.

How many of those games still work with Catalina / Big Sur? Most of my games in steam are no longer compatible thanks to 32bit support being gone.

The problems with Macs and gaming is endless. It's an embarrassment to Apple.

Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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