The Apple M3 Max (16 Core) is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was launched towards the end of 2023. It integrates a new 16-core CPU with 12 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 4 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz. There is also a slimmed-down 14-core variant with a 30-core GPU.
Thanks to the higher clock rates and architectural improvements, the processor performance is also significantly better than the M2 Max in benchmarks and can keep up with the fastest mobile CPUs (such as a Core i9-13900HX).
The M3 also integrates a new graphics card with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration via hardware. In the top model, all 40 cores of the chip are used and support up to 5 displays simultaneously (internal and 4 external).
GPU and CPU can jointly access the shared memory on the package (unified memory). This is available in 48, 64 and 128 GB variants and offers 400 GB/s maximum bandwidth (512 bit bus).
The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (compared to 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now also supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded. Like its predecessor, the Max chip offers two video engines and can therefore encode and decode two streams simultaneously.
Unfortunately, the integrated WLAN only continues to support WiFi 6E (no WiFi 7), unlike the small M3 SoC thunderbolt 4 is also supported (max 40 Gbit/s).
The chip is manufactured in the current 3nm process (N3B) at TSMC and contains 92 billion transistors (+37% vs. Apple M2 Max). Under load, the CPU part consumes up to 56 watts, the chip can use a total of 78 watts.
The AMD Ryzen 7 4800U is a processor for thin and light laptops based on the Renoir architecture. The 4800U integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 1.8 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.2 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured in the modern 7 nm process at TSMC and partly thanks to it AMD advertises a 2x improved performance per Watt for the Renoir chips. Compared to the similar named Ryzen 7 4800H, the 4800U offers a lower TDP (15 versus 45 Watt) and base clock (1.8 versus 2.9 GHz).
According to AMD, the Ryzen 7 4800U is 4% faster in Cinebench R20 single thread test and 90 % faster in the multithreaded test compared to the fast Intel Core i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake, 4 cores, 3.9 GHz). This means the CPU should be one of the fastest processors in the 15 Watt TDP range and well suited for demanding tasks. The sustained performance however ist strongly depending on the cooling system and the TDP settings of the laptop.
In addition to the eight CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 8 integrated graphics card with 8 CUs and up to 1750 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 8 MB level 3 cache can be found on the chip. See our hub page on the Renoir Processors for more information.
The TDP of the APU is specified at 15 Watt (default) and can be configured from 10 to 25 Watt by the laptop vendor. That means the chip is intended for thin and light laptops (but with fans).
Average Benchmarks Apple M3 Max 16-Core → 100%n=12
Average Benchmarks AMD Ryzen 7 4800U → 60%n=12
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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