[April Fool’s] This changes everything: Apple pushes Nvidia into crisis with a double whammy

GPU giant Nvidia is facing unexpected competition, and at the highest level: Apple is entering the graphics card market!

This article is an April Fool’s joke. We hope you enjoyed reading it and if you actually tried to order the Apple graphics card via the embedded product box: Sorry … but the chance was too good.

Apple is known for many things, but certainly not for being a gaming giant. What Apple is known for, on the other hand, are famousone last thing… moments.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, had just such a special moment to offer on the company’s 50th birthday. He dropped two bombshells at a press event:

1. Apple is entering the graphics card business, but how! This threatens the previous top dog Nvidia with a tangible crisis, as even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has to admit:Apple now has the leather jacket on, said Huang in an initial reaction.
2. GTA 6 is coming exclusively for macOS for a year after the consoles. Windows users will therefore have to wait even longer than previously thought.

Find out all the details now.

Apple goes all in on gamingAll in

No less thanthe fastest gaming GPU in the worldis what Apple wants to have up its sleeve, according to Cook, based on the huge success of its own M chips with the as yet unreleased top-of-the-range M6 Max variant.

• Launch models:At the launch, there will be three graphics cards under the new brand nameRay ithe Ray i G6 Max (Highest End), the Ray i G6 Pro (High End) and the Ray i G6 (Lower High End).
• Performance of the top GPU:With the top model G6 Max, Apple wants to beat no less than the RTX 5090 from Nvidia by a whopping 50 percent. If the AI functions for upscaling (Apple Ray iU) and the generation of intermediate images (Apple Ray iF), which have also been announced, are added, it should even be up to 100 percent.
• Performance of the other GPUs:According to Apple, the Ray i G6 Pro is far ahead of the RTX 5080 and the Ray i G6 far ahead of the RTX 5070 Ti or the RX 9070 XT from AMD.

Cook is certain:Nvidia and AMD are facing hard times.

Tough times are also likely for Microsoft:The Apple graphics cards will only run under macOS, but not under Windows. This also makes the special deal with Rockstar possible.

According to Apple, the company has been working with Rockstar and other game developers for years, unnoticed by the public, in order to be able to offer well-rounded drivers with high performance right from the start,

We’re not called Intel, said Cook.

But how much longer do we have to wait to see for ourselves?

Apple Ray i: release, price and the memory question

The Apple graphics cards will be released in just four days, on April 5, the day Nvidia was founded.
This should also be seen as a clear message from the tech giant from Cupertino to the competition.

The pricing structure is as follows:

• Ray i G6 Max (64 GB):3,333 euros
• Ray i G6 Pro (48 GB):2,222 euros
• Ray i G6 (32 GB):1,111 euros

Even the smallest model already has as much VRAM as Nvidia’s current top graphics card in the form of the RTX 5090. AMD, on the other hand, has a maximum of 24 GB (Radeon RX 7900 XTX) or 16 GB (Radeon RX 9070 XT).

When we asked how Apple was able to make this possible in times of the memory crisis, Cook simply replied:Who do you think really caused the memory crisis?.

Bright times are ahead

According to Cook, the new graphics cards and their advanced AI functions are just the beginning and much more is already planned for the near future:

• Next yearDeluxe new editions are already on the horizon. At best, they will be even faster and have more video memory than the first Ray-i GPUs; at worst, they will simply have a new name.
• Also planned: Notebook versions of the Apple graphics cards. Both the naming and the different TDP levels are intended to cause maximum confusion among end customers so as not to (unofficially) torpedo current industry standards, according to Apple.
• After the gaming community’s favorable response to Nvidia’s DLSS 5a similar feature will arrive in the fall of 2026 in the form of Apple Ray iS. Tim Cook comments:

The GTA 6 deal should set an example

In order to make it clear to both Microsoft and the assembled GPU competition how serious Apple is about its gaming offensive, the release of GTA 6 comes at just the right time for the company.

• The most anticipated game of all time will initially be released exclusively on macOS and for the Apple Vision Pro for one year after the consoles.
• It is not yet clear exactly when this will happen. But one thing is certain: the most beautiful version of GTA 6 will be available first on macOS and only much later on Windows.
• A Ray-i GPU is a prerequisite, so Apple is already working on a version of its own Vision Pro XR glasses with a suitable graphics unit, as the following prototype shows:

So if you want to play GTA 6 on Windows and with graphics cards from AMD, Nvidia or Intel, you’ll have to wait even longer than previously thought.

At the latest, this exclusive deal with Rockstar should make it clear that the days when Apple wasn’t one of the gaming giants are over.

Or else it makes it definitively clear that this article is an April Fool’s joke.