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Three new M3 chips at October 2023 Apple Event

Monday's Mac-focused Apple event saw the reveal of three new silicon M3 chips.

Ozzie Mejia

October 30, 2023 5:11 PM

Apple

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Monday evening's Apple presentation focused on the Mac, but also offered a glimpse into the company's graphics future. Three new silicon processors were unveiled alongside the new Macs. They are the M3, the M3 Pro, and the M3 Max.

The new M3 line of chips promises to operate significantly faster than the previous M2 line, boasting a 16-core Neural Engine, up to 2.5 times faster GPU rendering, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and a new technique called Dynamic Caching. The M3, with 25 billion transistors, features an 8-core CPU, a 10-core GPU, and up to 24GB of memory. The M3 Pro has 37 billion transistors, a 12-core CPU, an 18-core GPU, and up to 36GB of memory. The M3 Max has 92 billion transistors, a 16-core CPU, a 40-core GPU, and up to 128GB of memory. This line of chips is being touted as the first three-nanometer chips for the Mac.

Apple notes that the M3's Neural Engine will be capable of handling AI tasks thanks to its increased speed and power. In addition to supporting multiple media tasks, the M3's hardware-accelerated media engine can support H.264, HECS ProRes, and AV1 video decoding.

The numbers that Apple touted are a major jump from the M1, but it should be noted that the company only made sure to compare to the M1 generation. It's likely that these specs are only a modest leap from the M2 line. Look for the M3 chips to debut with the newest MacBook Pro and iMac hardware, which will ship starting next week. We'll have more on Monday's Apple Event, so keep an eye out for our wrap-up post here at Shacknews.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?