Apple today unveiled the next-generation M3 chip during its “Scary Fast” event. As expected, the M3 succeeds the current M2 chip powering most consumer-grade Macs. The third generation of Apple silicon offers substantial improvements across the board, particularly in performance and efficiency.
Apple says the next-generation GPU on all M3 series chips carries new features such as Dynamic Caching, and mesh shading. Hardware-accelerated ray tracing is also supported on the new GPU. Apple says the new graphics cores on the M3 are up to 1.8x faster compared to the M2, and 2.5x faster than the M1 when it comes to rendering. Apple also says that the M3’s GPU can deliver the same performance as the M1’s while only using half the power.
The M3 is built on the advanced 3nm node process, just like the A17 Pro on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The new node means that the M3 packs in 25 billion transistors, a 20% increase over the M2’s 20 billion. This translates into a 20% increase in CPU performance and a 20% faster GPU for the M3 compared to the M2. The 16-core Neural Engine is 15% faster than the M2 and 60% faster than the M1.
The M3 maintains the same 8-core arrangement as the M2 with four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, whereas the GPU can be configured with a 10-core option. The M3 also supports the same 24GB unified memory capacity as the M2.
The high-performance cores on the M3 are 15% faster than than those on the M2, and 30% faster than the M1. On the other hand, the M3’s high-efficiency cores are 30% faster than the M2 and 50% faster than the M1. Overall, the multicore performance of the M3 is 35% faster than the M1, with the M3 being able to offer the same CPU performance as the M1 while using half the power.
Like its predecessors, the M3 chip carries powerful media engines for hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding. The M3 can accelerate codes including H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW. In addition, a new AV1 decoder is also present for a more efficient playback of streaming services.
The new M3 chip powers the refreshed 24-inch iMac as well as the new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro.
