Yesterday, Digital Foundry published their review of the iPhone 17 Pro, which as you’d expect, focuses on the Pro model’s gaming capabilities. Tested against iPhone 13 and 15 Pros and using a series of benchmark tests as well as real-world gameplay, Digital Foundry’s tests revealed significant improvements in several areas, including:
- GPU performance;
- Ray tracing capabilities;
- Second-generation dynamic caching; and
- Improved thermals.
Benchmarks are one thing, but Digital Foundry’s tests also revealed real-world benefits to the iPhone 17 Pro, such as:
- a 60% performance increase over the iPhone 15 Pro on Resident Evil Village,
- the elimination of freezing and big frame rate drops in Assassin’s Creed Mirage,
- more reliable 30 fps gameplay in Death Stranding.
Those are significant improvements in just two generations of the A-series chips.
What really caught my eye, though, was the impact of cooling. The iPhone 17 Pro uses a vapor chamber and aluminum chassis to help cool the device and keep its chips running at full speed longer. When Digital Foundry placed the 17 Pro on a desk fan, it became clear just how important that cooling is.
Running a benchmark stress test with air blowing across the back of the iPhone 17 Pro reduced the performance drop by roughly 50%. With those sorts of results, I expect external cooling solutions like this X5s telescopic controller and FX5 Cooler combo from GameSir to become a popular accessory in the coming year, so of course, I’ve ordered one and will report back soon.
Federico
