Apple Unveils Amped-Up M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Processors All at Once
Apple's Scary Fast announcement brings news of new MacBooks and the return of the iMac, but inside every one of these products is something just as significant: A trio of new M3 processors.
The third generation of Apple silicon is here with the launch of the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips, bringing the latest Macs to new heights of power and performance. These processors bring added CPU cores, a new GPU with amped-up capabilities, and a powerful new 3-nanometer manufacturing process that puts 25 billion transistors onto the M3 chip—5 billion more than were offered on the M2 processor in 2022, and 9 billion more than the M1!
But you'll always find a lot more to a new processor than the transistor count. Apple has upgraded the M3 across the board, revving up powerful new capabilities for the GPU, adding performance cores and efficiency cores to the Pro and Max models, boosting the supported memory, and tuning the neural and video engines for significant performance boosts. Let's look in more detail at everything Apple has changed, and how it promises to make the new M3 lineup its best yet.
One of the biggest changes M3 brings to Apple silicon is the addition of dynamic caching, which leverages more of the machine's local memory for better memory utilization. Instead of commandeering a block of memory regardless of whether the GPU needs it, the new dynamic approach tailors memory allotment to the needs of the GPU functions being used and makes that information available to developers. It's the cornerstone of Apple's improved graphics architecture and should make it easier to get the best performance out of the GPU.
On top of this, Apple has added hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading to M series processors for the
Read more on pcmag.com
