At Apple’s October 2023 event, the company announced a new series of chips: M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. Alongside the chips, Apple also announced that a new 24-inch iMac, and a new series of Macbook Pros will include them.Â
The M3 chip
The M3 series chips consist of the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max models. Apple said that these chips, built on 3-nanometer process technology, will have improved graphics, faster rendering speeds, a faster CPU and neural engine, and support for more unified memory.
This chip will introduce Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and mesh shading, leading to rendering speeds up to 2.5 times faster than M1 chips in Apple’s tests. The company said these enhancements are designed to offer smoother experiences, especially in resource-intensive tasks and gaming scenarios.
The M3 series will also include CPU enhancements, featuring performance cores that operate 30 per cent faster than the M1 chip to help facilitate tasks like code compilation and handling multiple audio tracks in applications like Logic Pro. Apple also said the M3 efficiency cores operate 50 per cent faster than their M1 equivalents. Additionally, these chips include a unified memory architecture supporting up to 128GB of memory.
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New computers
The new 24-inch iMac will be powered by the M3 chip, marking a significant enhancement in performance – two times faster in comparison to the M1 models. Apple also said this iMac is 2.5x faster than 27-inch Intel-based iMacs, and four times faster than the most powerful 21.5-inch model.Â
Apple said that the M3 chip, featuring an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, will provide a boost to those that use iMacs for video editing, gaming or 3D design process.
The new Macbook Pro lineup will also include M3 family chips. According to Apple, the M3 Pro and M3 Max models will improve processing power, offer additional memory support, and are up to 40 per cent faster than their predecessors.
The new iMacs retail between C$1,699 – C$1949, while the new MacBook Pro models retail for C$2,099 – C$3,299. Both are available November 7.
