Apple reveals new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips with ‘Dynamic Caching’ GPU

Less than a year after the reveal of its M2 series, Apple has launched its new M3 chip line, including the standard M3, the M3 Pro and the M3 Max.

The M3 processor is coming to Apple’s 24-inch iMac and base-level 14-inch MacBook Pro (for the first time), while the M3 Pro/Pro Max are available in the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Apple describes the jump to the M3 family of chips as the “biggest leap forward in graphics architecture ever for Apple silicone.” The tech giant says that thanks to ‘Dynamic Caching,’ the M3 series’ GPU is far more efficient because it can allocate a specific amount of memory to several tasks. It also offers hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading on Mac for the first time.

Apple’s latest chip series is here. Image credit: Apple

While Apple doesn’t compare the M3 to the M2 series directly, likely because the performance increases aren’t as impressive, the company does boast about its gains over the M1 line. For example, it says that the M3 series CPU performance cores and efficiency cores are 30 percent and 50 percent faster than its M1 chips and that the M3 series’ Neural Engine is 60 percent faster than the M1’s.

I’m looking forward to benchmarking and testing the M3 chip series myself, particularly regarding how it performs compared to the M2 line.

The base-level M3 chip includes an 8-core CPU/10-core GPU (up to 24GB of RAM), the M3 Pro features a 12-core CPU/18-core GPU (up to 36GB of RAM), and the M3 Max offers a 14-core CPU/30-core GPU (up to 36GB of RAM) with the 14-inch MacBook Pro and a 14-core/30-core GPU or a 16-core CPU/40-core GPU (up to 128GB of RAM) with the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

For more on Apple’s ‘Scary Fast’ event, including our coverage of the updated M3-powered MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac, follow this link.

Image credit: Apple