M3 Pro/Max vs M2 Pro/Max | Tech

Apple launched its new M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max custom silicon with the new MacBook Pro laptops and iMac. With more powerful CPUs, GPUs, and media engines, the chips also support up to 128GB of unified memory. Join along for our in-depth M3 Pro/Max vs M2 Pro/Max comparison (and base M3 vs M2 too) for how everything compares.

Apple has refreshed the MacBook Pro and iMac just before the end of 2023 with the new M3 family. Whether you’re interested in buying a new laptop or desktop Mac or are just curious about how the new Apple Silicon compares, let’s jump in!

We’ll also include the entry-level M3 vs M2 in the charts below. And for detailed MacBook Pro and iMac comparisons, check out these guides:

M3 Pro/Max vs M2 Pro/Max

CPU, GPU, memory, neural engine specs

Interestingly, for the M3 Pro, the high-end has 1 less GPU core and 50GB/s less memory bandwidth.

Apple says the M3 family efficiency cores are up to 30% faster than the M2 family, and up to 50% faster than the M1 family.

For performance cores, the M3 family is 15 and 30% faster than M2 and M1, respectively.

And Apple says rendering on M3 is up to 1.8x faster than M2 (and up to 2.5x faster than M1).

Transistor count

The overall transistor count has increased to 25 billion for the M3, 37 billion for M3 Pro, and 92 billion for the M3 Max.

CPU benchmark scores

In our first look at M3 iMac benchmarks, the single-core and multi-core scores came in near the 35% improvement that Apple…

read more 9to5mac.com