Apple’s New M3 Family of Chips Comes With Huge GPU Performance Improvements for Gamers and Pro Creators
Apple announced it’s M3 lineup today that comprises of a total of three chipsets — M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. The M3 family is fabricated on TSMC’s 3nm process, promising improved performance and efficiency.
Huge GPU Upgrades — for Pros
The GPU on these chips have been drastically improved, and while each of the three have varying specifications, Apple has introduced a new technology called Dynamic Caching, where the GPU essentially allocated the local memory in real-time, only about how much is needed for a task. Elsewhere, it was the software that had to do this. Other than that, all of the three chips support hardware accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading across the board.
From the looks of it, Apple has invested quite a bit of resources into the GPU department, and that could probably indicate a shift to gaming, or to better cater the professionals.
Apple M3 Chips — Chipset Configuration and Performance Numbers
This year, Apple has truly focused on the graphical performance of it’s chips, and the differentiating factor is how huge of a performance upgrade, Apple’s most powerful SoC, the M3 Max brings to the table. Since all of the chips have variable performance numbers, here’s what differentiates one from the other.
M3
As for the performance numbers, the vanilla M3 features an 8-core (4 performance + 4 efficiency) CPU, and a 10-core GPU, with support for 24GB of unified memory (RAM).
- The M3 is: 35% faster than the M1; 20% faster than the M2.
- The M3’s GPU is: 65% faster than the M1; 20% faster than the M2.
M3 Pro
The M3 Pro comes with a 12-core (6 performance + 6 efficiency) CPU, and an 18-core GPU, with support for up to 36GB of unified memory.
- The M3 Pro is: 20% faster than the M1 Pro.
- The M3 Pro’s GPU is: 40% faster than the M1 Pro; 10% faster than the M2 Pro.
M3 Max
The M3 Max comes with a 16-core CPU and a monstrous 40-core GPU, and for the first time for Apple Silicon, the M3 Max can support 128GB of unified memory.
- The M3 Max is: 80% faster than the M1 Max; 50% faster than the M2 Max.
- The M3’s GPU is: 50% faster than the M1 Max; 20% faster than the M2 Max.
When Will it Be Available?
While the pre-orders for MacBooks and iMacs are opened, they won’t start shipping until next week, with the M3 Max devices to be shipped out late in November. This is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.
