Apple M3 Max 16-Core vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

Apple M3 Max 16-Core

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.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Mobile Platform is a high-end SoC for smartphones that was introduced in late 2021 and manufactured in 4 nm at Samsung. Integrates one “Prime Core” based on a ARM Cortex-X2 architecture clocked at up to 3 GHz. Three more performance cores are based on the Cortex-A710 but clocked up to 2.5 GHz. Furthermore, four energy saving cores are integrated that are based on the ARM Cortex-A510 architecture and clocked at up to 1.8 GHz. All cores can use the shared 6 MB level 3 cache.

Compared to the Snapdragon 888 (Plus), the CPU part gains 20% performance and 30% power savings according to Qualcomm. This means that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the fastest CPU for Android based smartphones and should be positioned between the Apple A13 and A14 CPU.

The integrated AI Engine can offer up to 4x faster AI performance thanks to the bigger Tensor engine. The 18-Bit-Spectra-ISP also saw some big improvements and is now called Snapdragon Sight.

The integrated Adreno 730 offers a 30% graphics boost compared to the previous Adreno 660.

The integrated Snapdragon X65 5G modem is also new and offers faster transfer rates (up to 10 Gbps download and 3 Gbps upload). The FastConnect 6900 offers support for the current Wifi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.