Apple has achieved another first: last fall they introduced the first 3-nanometer chips to the PC market. The new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max deliver dramatically better performance, have a brand new GPU architecture, a faster CPU and Neural Engine, and support more central memory.
Like the A17 Pro for iPhone 15 Pro (Max), the M3 chip is designed using a 3nm manufacturing process. This is an advanced manufacturing technology used to make semiconductor chips. A 3nm process means that the transistor gate is only 3 nanometers wide, we explain what is so special about it.
Extra powerful 3-nanometer chip
The M3 series is designed using a 3nm manufacturing process. This is an advanced manufacturing technology used to make semiconductor chips. A 3nm process means that the transistor gate is only 3 nanometers wide.
The size of the transistor gate is important because it determines how many transistors can be placed on a single chip. The smaller the transistor gate, the more transistors fit on the chip.
This leads to chips that are faster, more efficient and more powerful than chips produced using larger processes. This means they perform better with the same specifications. The previous generations of Apple chips used a 5nm process.
M3 processor in short
The brand new M3 line GPU represents a major step forward for Apple silicon graphics architecture. The GPU is faster, more efficient and uses the new Dynamic Caching technology. In addition, thanks to this GPU, new features such as ray tracing and mesh shading with hardware acceleration are possible for rendering on Mac for the first time. The rendering speed is now up to 2.5 times faster than with the M1 chips. This is especially a big plus when gaming on a Mac.
The CPU’s performance cores and efficiency cores are 30 percent and 50 percent faster than the M1, respectively, and the Neural Engine is 60 percent faster than the M1 line. Furthermore, there is a new media engine that supports AV1 decoding, so that images from streaming services are displayed more efficiently and in higher quality.
M3 chip specifications
Below we list the specifications of the M3 chip and what its possibilities are. The M3 chip can be found in the 24-inch iMac 2nd generation, MacBook Air 2024 and the entry-level model of the new 14-inch MacBook Pro from 2023. The M3 Pro and M2 Max can be found in the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro 2023.
M3 chip
- 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
- up to 10-core GPU
- Up to 24 GB memory (standard 8 GB)
- 16-core Neural Engine
- Ray tracing with hardware acceleration
- 100 GB/s memory bandwidth
- Media engine: H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW with hardware acceleration
- ProRes encoding and decoding engine
- choice of up to 2 TB of storage
M3 Pro chip
- up to 12-core CPU with 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
- up to 18-core GPU
- 16-core Neural Engine
- Ray tracing with hardware acceleration
- One video encoding engine
- 150 GB/s memory bandwidth
- choice of up to 36 GB of RAM
- choice of up to 4 TB of storage
M3 Max chip
- 12-core CPU with 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
- up to 40-core GPU
- 16-core Neural Engine
- Ray tracing with hardware acceleration
- Two video encoding engines
- 400 GB/s memory bandwidth
- choice of up to 128 GB of RAM
- choice of up to 8 TB of storage
Brand new GPU
The new GPU in the M3 line represents a major step forward for Apple silicon graphics architecture. Unlike traditional GPUs, this GPU uses Dynamic Caching, which allocates local memory in hardware in real time. For each task, only the amount of memory that is actually needed is used precisely.
With the arrival of the M3 chips, Mac can now use ray tracing with hardware acceleration for the first time. Ray tracing models the properties of light as it interacts with a scene, resulting in realistic and physically accurate images. Thanks to this feature and the new graphics architecture, up to 2.5 times faster speeds are possible in pro apps than with the M1 chip.
Game developers can use ray tracing to ensure that shadows and reflections are displayed more accurately, so that images look lifelike. The new GPU also enables hardware-accelerated mesh shading on Mac, boosting geometry processing and enabling more visually complex scenes in games and graphically demanding apps. M3’s GPU can deliver the same performance as M1 with virtually half the energy, while peak performance is up to 65 percent higher.