- You may have seen some of my M1 Mac gaming videos already
on this channel.
And in all of those videos, I've only managed
to get a 60 hertz refresh rate on the monitors I was using,
which included an ASUS 144 hertz gaming monitor.
Some of you might even just prefer a higher refresh rate,
not for gaming, but just for normal office work
or web browsing as well.
So after doing a bit of research online,
I've discovered that the M1 Mac does,
in fact, support refresh rates over 144 hertz,
but you need a specific cable and connection.
In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to do it,
what type of cable you will need,
and any kind of limitations you might run into.
First thing's first, you're going to need a proper monitor.
It doesn't have to be a gaming version,
but it does need to have a high refresh rate.
Now, this monitor I'm using is about four years old now,
but it supports up to 144 hertz.
And the other thing is that you need to actually have a need
for a refresh rate above 60 hertz.
If you play games like Fortnite or Counter-Strike: GO,
and you can consistently get above 60 frames per second
on these games, that is a good reason.
By the way,
you definitely can get above 60 FPS on these games.
Just see my other videos.
You will also need a USB-C to DisplayPort cable.
When shopping for one,
make sure it is a DisplayPort version 1.4
and supports a maximum output of up to 4K at 60 hertz.
This means that at 1440p,
you will also be able to achieve 144 hertz.
And I will link a cable that is compatible
in the description of this video,
just to make it easy for you.
Now, you can try a USB-C to DisplayPort adaptor instead
of a dedicated cable,
but some people online have reported some potential issues
with this as it's technically not a direct connection.
So my recommendation is just to spend 25 or 30 bucks
on a dedicated compatible cable
to save yourself any headache.
Now, if you're using an M1 Mac mini instead,
you can actually use an HDMI 2.0 cable directly
from the mini to your monitor to achieve the same result.
Again, I'll have a compatible cable
for this linked in the description.
So without further ado,
let's jump into the Created Labs testing studio,
and I'll show you how it works.
Okay, guys, so here we have the setup.
Now, as I mentioned before,
I do have a 144 hertz ASUS gaming monitor.
So this is 27-inch.
It's an IPS display and also one millisecond refresh.
I've also got the 2020 M1 MacBook Air.
just the base model here, 8 gigs of RAM,
256 gigabytes of storage.
In terms of accessories,
I've actually got this really cool,
mechanical Razer keyboard here.
If you guys are interested in me doing a review on this,
I will soon.
It's sort of a very no frills, no fuss keyboard.
It works very good.
It sounds nice as well.
And it actually completely detaches from the cable.
It is a USB-C cable.
And as you can see here,
if I literally just plug the other end of this USB-C cable
into the Mac Air, so you can see there, it's plugged in,
this actually works really, really well
as you can see there.
Anyway, that's not the topic of this video.
As you can see here,
I have the cable I was mentioning before.
So it's just a USB-C to DisplayPort.
So what I'll do first of all is I'll plug it
into the monitor and then into the Mac,
and we'll get this test started.
Okay, so I plugged it into the monitor.
Now, let's plug it into the USB-C port on the Mac mini.
And as you can see there,
it loads up fine without any issues.
And first thing's first,
let's see if this thing is actually coming
up as 1440p and also 144 hertz.
So we'll come up into the Apple logo, System Preferences,
and we'll go Displays.
And as you can see here, we've got 2560 x 1440p.
We've also got the full 144 hertz refresh rates.
So that's working perfectly.
Now, what does that look like?
Well, you may not be able to see it
on this particular camera,
because I'm only able to record in 25 frames per second
on this camera, the way I have it set up.
But looking at this in real life, it's very, very smooth.
There's not really any screen tearing.
It looks a lot better than 60 hertz.
So what we'll do is we'll do actually a proper test.
So I'm just going to load
up a relatively resource-friendly game,
and that is going to be Fortnite.
A few of you guys have seen some
of my previous Fortnite videos.
So I thought it'd be a good game just to test.
So let's load this up.
We'll get into the settings, and then we'll see what kind
of FPS and also experience we can have
with a 144 hertz gaming monitor gaming on an M1 MacBook Air.
All right, so now we're on the menu screen.
So let's just go into Battle Royale.
Now, a few people have asked me how I'm able
to play Fortnite.
And this is an older season.
I don't really play Fortnite, obviously, at all.
So I don't know a whole lot about it,
but I've been reading into it,
and this is just an older season.
So don't pay too much attention to it.
Apple and Fortnite have had a big fight.
And it's just a bit of a mess.
So anyway, let's go into the settings here.
And let's make sure we're at 1440p.
We'll set the frame rate to unlimited.
Everything else here...
I'm actually just going to set everything to low
except 3D Resolution.
You can leave that at 100% just
because I want to maximize the FPS just
to see what the experience is like.
I might actually crank this down to 1080p,
but we'll see how it goes at 1440p.
So let's apply that.
We'll go back, and we'll just get into a solo game.
Okay, guys, so we are now on the ground.
We're not quite getting past 60 FPS.
I mean, we are at 60 FPS.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to go
into the settings, and I'm just going to change this to 1080p,
just so we can maximize the FPS.
Okay, so as you can see in the top right-hand corner,
we are pretty much bang on 100 FPS.
We're actually getting a little bit above that.
And if I run around and kind of do some jumping
and some quick movements, it is definitely more than 60 FPS.
I can see a huge difference compared
to what I was doing before.
Now, you will obviously notice some
of the artifacting there.
And again, guys, this game is not optimized at all
for the M1.
So you will see a little bit of glitching here and there.
But the actual gameplay is totally fine.
I can run around.
I can jump.
I can do this and that.
The frames will sometimes drop down to around 60.
But right now, as you can see, I'm at about 60 to 70 FPS.
And if I come back over here,
I'll be back up to 100.
And it's very, very smooth.
So you definitely can tell the difference between 60 FPS
and 100 FPS right now on the M1, which is pretty cool.
Because again, this is only about 2 1/2 months old.
Anyway, guys, that's it for this video.
Hope you enjoyed.
Again, just a really quick one,
just to show that, yes, you can get a 144 hertz refresh rate
from your M1 devices.
You do just need to be using the correct cable,
and you can still play games
or do productivity tasks or web browse
and get that really nice,
buttery smooth 144 hertz refresh rate
on a particular monitor from the M1.
Apart from that, thank you guys for watching.
Again, any comments or questions,
check out the comments section down below.
The link to the appropriate cables are in the description.
And I'll catch you guys in the next one.