What simply occurred? Apple held its Scary Fast Halloween event on the uncommon time of 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT yesterday, the place it confirmed off the newest M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. The SoCs will seem within the all-new MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch fashions, in addition to the 24-inch iMac.
The 3nm M3 chips include a new GPU structure providing hardware-accelerated mesh shading, ray tracing, and Dynamic Caching, the latter of which permits the allocation of native reminiscence in actual time primarily based on an software’s wants.
Without going into additional element, Apple mentioned that the M3’s GPU is 1.8 occasions sooner than the M2 and 2.5 occasions sooner than the M1 in Pro apps. It may also attain the identical efficiency degree because the M1 utilizing half the ability.
Looking on the particular person chips, the M3 options an 8-core CPU (4 efficiency cores and 4 effectivity cores) and a 10-core GPU with assist for 24GB of unified RAM. Apple says its single-threaded efficiency is as much as 35% sooner than the M1 Pro.
The M3 Pro will increase the CPU core depend to 12 (six efficiency, six effectivity) and has an 18-core GPU with assist for as much as 36GB of reminiscence. The flagship M3 Max, in the meantime, comes with a 16-core CPU (12 efficiency, 4 effectivity), a 40-core GPU, and assist for as much as 128GB of RAM. It additionally options two ProRes engines, which ought to please video enhancing professionals. Apple says the chip is 80% sooner than the M1 Max.
Apple added that the M3’s AI-focused Neural Engine is as much as 60% sooner than the one used within the M1 collection of chips. There’s additionally a new media engine supporting AV1 decoding and that includes {hardware} acceleration for H.264, HEVC, and ProRes (customary and RAW).
Elsewhere, the new MacBook Pros are mentioned to supply 22 hours of battery life, a greater Liquid Retina XDR show, and a peak HDR brightness of 1,600 nits.
The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro will include the usual M3; the laptop computer replaces the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar keyboard. This dimension mannequin may also be obtainable with the M3 Pro and M3 Max, whereas the 2 higher-end chips would be the solely choices within the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The M3 Pro and M3 Max laptops get a new Space Black shade choice, too.
The base 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro will begin at $1,599 whereas the 16-inch Pros begins at $2,499. They may be ordered at present, although the M3 Max fashions do not ship till November.
Moving onto the 24-inch iMac, the new model marks the primary time the all-in-one has been up to date since April 2021 when the M1-powered machine arrived.
Apple says the M3-powered iMac (there are not any choices with the M3 Pro or M3 Max) is as much as two occasions sooner than its predecessor and 2.5x sooner than 27-inch Intel-based all-in-one PCs.
iMac costs stay the identical, beginning at $1,299 for the 256GB storage and 8GB RAM configuration. It may be ordered at present for transport subsequent week.