Apple has today announced not just one, but three new chips. Say hello to the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max.
This is the first time that Apple has unveiled three new chips at the same time with Apple going all-in on TSMC's new 3nm manufacturing process. That's the same process that was used to build the A17 Pro chip that powers the iPhone 15 Pro.
In terms of performance, Apple says that we can expect a "monstrous" performance improvement over the M1 chips still powering some of its machines, while also using around half of the power. That should make the chips particularly impressive when used in portable machines like the MacBook Air, for example. Each chip features local memory, dynamic caching, and more.
So long M2
Apple's M2 chip was no slouch, unveiled in June of 2022, the base chip brought with it an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU. The M2 Pro has a 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU, while the Max offers the same CPU core with either 30 or 38 GPU cores. Still at large is the impressive M2 Ultra, two M2 Max chips connected to create a 24-core CPU and up to 72 GPU cores.
However, things are getting moved up a notch for the M3 family of devices.
In terms of the M3, that comes with a 10-core GPU and an 8-core CPU which Apple says makes it a 65% faster chip than the M3.
Moving on to the M3 Pro, that comes with up to a 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU with Apple claiming a speed boost of 45% over the M1 Pro.
At the top of the lineup, we have the M3 Max — a chip that comes with up to a 16-core CPU and a massive 40-core GPU. All of that means that these will be the fastest chips that Apple has ever offered.
All of these new chips are set to power Apple's latest round of devices including new laptops like the updated M3 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Apple also finally updated the 24-inch iMac to add an M3 chip, making it a considerably better buy than the outdated M1 version from 2021.
More from iMore
