The Release of Apple’s M1X SoC Is Right Around the Corner

If the rumor mill is to be believed, the release of Apple’s much-anticipated M1X SoC is right around the corner! In fact, we’re talking mere days at this point. Whether that’ll actually end up happening still remains to be seen as Apple has shown quite the proclivity for throwing curve balls.

The reason why this particular bit of news is so exciting is because the oft-rumored M1X SoC is going to come in two different SKUs: one with 16 GPU cores, and another with a whopping 32! That, in short, is simply mind-blowing, and if Apple has managed to increase its power linearly (or come even remotely close to it), we could be in for quite a revolution.

Unfortunately, gaming on a Mac is still a challenge (to say the least). Heck, one could argue that it’s harder than it’s ever been because of M1-based machines losing out on Bootcamp support. And, well, the M1X SoC isn’t going to change that — at least not overnight.

An Important Moment, No Doubt

Its effect, however, will be two-fold: because it’ll have such a potent GPU, you’ll be able to emulate your favorite games through Rosetta 2 and still get incredible results. That, in short, is nothing to scoff at. There will be a performance penalty, of course, but it won’t be nearly as egregious as it is right now. Secondly, with ARM-based SoCs becoming more and more mainstream, you can expect the world’s best developers to board the hype train.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, for instance, had day-one support for Apple’s M1 — and it runs like a dream. The fact that Blizzard went through the hassle of porting its novel expansion for such a cutting-edge architecture tells you all you need to know. With 32 GPU cores packed inside a thin-and-light enclosure, buying a MacBook will become a lot more alluring. It’ll be a more well-rounded machine, too, rather than a first-gen product that just so happens to run extremely well.

Unfortunately, it won’t come cheap. Multiple industry analysts are predicting quite a sizable price hike for Apple’s bespoke chipset and, well, it’s easy to understand where such a projection is coming from. Apple has the only SoC of this kind on the market, which means they can sell it for as much as they want — the closest alternative would be Microsoft’s SQ2 which, in all fairness, is relatively dreadful for even the most basic tasks, let alone gaming or any other, more demanding workflow.

Apple’s M1X SoC | Expected Release Date

If Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is to be believed, Apple is going to announce two next-gen MacBook Pro models — both of which will be sporting the M1X SoC — through a digital event in the second half of October. Whether it’ll truly be as powerful as we expect still remains to be seen, but there’s definitely a reason to be optimistic (and hyped beyond measure, too)!