Key Highlights
- The M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max are the first to be built on a 3nm chip for MacBook Pro and iMac.
- The latest CPUs are said to be faster and more efficient.
- The CPU performance cores and efficiency cores are 30 per cent and 50 per cent faster than those in M1.
- Ray tracing and mesh shading come to Mac for the first time.
Apple’s latest PC processors M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max have finally made their debut at today’s Apple Event Scary Fast. The advanced chipsets are the industry’s first to use 3nm process tech designed for a personal computer. This process allows more transistors to be crammed inside a smaller area hence speed and efficiency are improved. The M3 series of CPUs also brings improvements and new features to the recently released MacBook Pro and iMac.
Apple’s family of chips has just got bigger as the company has brought not one but three PC chipsets at once- M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. The latest CPUs are said to be faster and more efficient. M3 has an 8-core CPU, with four performance cores and four efficiency cores, that is up to 35 per cent faster than before with support for up to 24GB of unified memory. Whereas, M3 Pro has a 12-core CPU consisting of six performance cores and six efficiency cores, offering single-threaded performance that is up to 30 per cent faster than M1 Pro.
M3 Max’s 16-core CPU comes with 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores, which is up to 80 per cent faster than M1 Max.
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The CPU performance cores and efficiency cores are 30 per cent and 50 per cent faster than those in M1, respectively. While the Neural Engine is 60 per cent faster than the Neural Engine in comparison to the M1 family of processors.
Apple’s latest processors come integrated with the newest technology, specifically Dynamic Caching, and introduce hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading to Mac for the first time. They now have up to 2.5 times faster rendering speed than M1 chipsets. Ray tracing enables more accurate shadows and reflections, creating deeply immersive environments for game developers.
Moreover, they are now supported by the new media engine AVI decode resulting in more efficient and high-quality video experiences from streaming services.
The latest GPU for the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips features Dynamic Caching that allows local memory usage in real time so that only the exact amount of memory is required to do easy tasks. This is said to majorly increase performance for the most demanding pro apps and games. The GPU also allows hardware-accelerated mesh shading on the Mac, increasing geometry processing efficiency and capabilities for more visually complex scenes in graphics-intensive games and apps.
M3 features 25 billion transistors and has a 10-core GPU that is 65 per cent faster than the previous generation.
M3 Pro includes 37 billion transistors and an 18-core GPU that is 40 percent faster than M1 Pro supporting unified memory goes up to 36GB. With the M3 Pro on the new MacBook Pro tasks like stitching together and manipulating enormous panoramic photos in Adobe Photoshop are faster than before.
M3 Max features up to 92 billion transistors with a 40-core GPU that is up to 50 per cent faster than M1 Max. It comes with support for up to 128GB of unified memory. The chipset has two ProRes engines that make video post-production work on even the highest-resolution content fast and fluid
All the chipsets in the M3 family support up to 128GB of memory for better performance. Also, they support the most popular video codecs, including H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW thanks to the advanced media engine that supports AV1 decoding.
Apple’s latest processors M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max will make the new MacBook Pro and iMac more energy efficient therefore helping in delivering the longest battery life ever in a Mac — up to 22 hours.
