Apple’s new M3 chips have big GPU upgrades focused on gaming and pro apps
By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.
Apple is unveiling its new M3 processors today, and all three include big improvements to the GPU side of the chips. The M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max will all offer faster CPU performance, but crucially, the M3 family of chips will include significant changes to the GPU to improve professional apps and gaming performance. All three M3 chips will debut in new MacBook Pro models, with the M3 also part of a new 24-inch iMac.
The base M3 includes an eight-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores, and Apple claims it’s up to 35 percent faster than the M1 for CPU performance. We don’t know exactly how the M3 compares to the M2, but when Apple announced the M2 last year, it said it had 18 percent faster CPU performance over the M1. The M3 also has a 10-core GPU with a next-gen architecture that is said to be 65 percent faster than the M1 for graphics performance. The M3 supports up to 24GB of unified memory and one external display (in addition to the one built into iMacs and MacBooks).
The M3 Pro has an improved 12-core CPU with six performance cores and six efficiency cores, plus an 18-core GPU that’s up to 40 percent faster than the M1 Pro. Apple says the CPU performance is up to 30 percent faster than the M1 Pro for single-threaded tasks, once again avoiding a direct M2 comparison. The M3 Pro supports up to 36GB of unified memory.
The M3 Max has a 16-core GPU with 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores and a 40-core GPU that is said to be up to 50 percent faster than the M1 Max. The M3 Max supports up to 128GB of unified memory.
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