Here's everything you need to know about Apple's new M3 processors
This past Monday, Apple held its Scary Fast Event, streamed online for viewers to watch worldwide. At the event, Apple unveiled its new product line of computers, the MacBook Pro and iMac. But the star of the event, undoubtedly, was the new line of processors in these computers, consisting of the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. The newly unveiled computers will be an industry first to utilize TSMC's 3nm process.
Improvements to the new processor are optimal computing and graphical performance, including an updated GPU that's said to be suited for video editing and gaming. As always, when chips die are shrunken, it will be faster and consume less heat and battery power.
Let's have an in-depth look at each M3 chip.
The specs for the following are: M3 will have eight cores, 10 GPU cores, and memory support up to 24GB. Moving over to the M3 Pro, it will have 10 CPU cores, 12 GPU cores, and up to 36GB of memory support. Finally, we have the M3, the most powerful of the three chips. It will have 16 CPU and 40 GPU cores, up to 128GB of memory support.
Regarding performance, the M3 processors have vast improvements over the previous Gen M-series processors. Apple stated the performance will be up by 30% faster than the M1, and efficient cores will be 50% faster. The new M3 chip line will have the identical multi-core performance as the M1, using half the power consumption --- up to 35% more peak performance at peak power.
Featured in the entry-level M3 chips are 25 billion transistors. The 10-core GPU is faster than the M1 graphical performance, as claimed by Apple. The 8-core CPU will have four performance cores and 4 GPU cores, which will be 35% faster than the M1 computing performance.
Next up, we have the M3 Pro chip, which has over 37 billion transistors and an 18-core GPU that will be up to 40% faster than the M1 Pro. The 12-core CPU will have six performance and six efficiency cores, delivering up to 30% faster single-threaded performance over the M1 Pro, with up to 36GB of unified memory.
Finally, we have the ever-so-powerful M3 Max chip embedded with 92 billion transistors. The 40-core GPU will be 50% faster than the M1 Max, and the 16-core CPU will contain 12 performance and four efficiency cores up to 80% faster than the M1 Max. The processor will support up to 128GB of unified memory. Being the M3 Max is the most powerful chip, it can handle the rigors of high-performance gaming.
The M3 chips will feature an enhanced Neural Engine that will serve as an acceleration for Machine Learning (ML for short). The Neural Engine will be up to 60% faster than the M1 series, stated Apple. The M3 processors will also have an advanced media engine providing hardware acceleration for video codecs such as H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW. A first for any Mac computer is the media engine support of AV1 decoding.
Thanks to the M3 processors, the new Mac computers will now support hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which is a first for any Mac system. The new GPU will also bring hardware-accelerated mesh shading to the Mac, resulting in higher-quality graphics, more accurate lighting, and detailed environments.
Preorders for the new M3 Mac computers are now available for preorder on Apple's website. Shipping will begin on November 7. The pricing will go as follows: the entry-level M3 chip in the iMac 2023 will start at $1,299, and the new 14-inch MacBook Pro will go for $1,599. Apple will also offer a 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro at $1,999. Lastly, the 16-inch MacBook Pro will start at $2,499. Thus far, I have not found any listed prices on the M3 Max computers.
