Apple unveils trio of M3 processors built on 3nm node

Last night during Apple's annual Mac-focused announcement event, the company officially unveiled its latest Apple Silicon processor. The M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max processors are heading to Macs imminently, with faster CPU cores and beefier iGPUs with ray-tracing and mesh shading support.

While these chips will be faster than the M2 processors, Apple was particularly keen on showcasing the upgrade here VS its first-gen M1 chip, encouraging users of older Macs to upgrade. According to Apple, the M3 Max is up to 80 percent faster than the M1 Max. The standard M3 is said to be up to 60 percent faster than the M1 found in the 13-inch MacBook Pro in Final Cut Pro rendering, and up to 40 percent faster in Xcode code compilation, and up to 40 percent faster in Microsoft Excel.

The M3 processor marks the first PC chip built on the 3nm process node. As far as core specs go, the base M3 chip has an eight-core CPU, split between four performance cores and four efficiency cores, alongside a 10-core GPU. The M3 Pro sports a 12-core CPU alongside an 18-core GPU and the M3 Max has a 16-core CPU cores and a 40-core GPU.

On the GPU side, Apple has made key improvements by adding in hardware support for ray-tracing, as well as mesh shading. This will help Apple in its push to bring more AAA games to Macs and other devices, as many newer games now target features like RT lighting.

The first MacBook Pros sporting M3 processors will be available soon, starting at £1,699.

KitGuru Says: The M3 seems like an impressive upgrade for those coming from an M1-based Mac, but it sounds like even Apple doesn't think you should rush to upgrade if you're already using an M2-based system.

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