Apple M3 Pro 11-Core vs AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G

Apple M3 Pro 11-Core

The Apple M3 Pro 11 Core is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was introduced late 2023. It integrates 11 of the 12 CPU cores with 5 of 6 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 6 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz.

Compared to the M2 Pro the M3 Pro has been slimmed down somewhat and swaps two performance cores for efficiency cores. This is due to the changed core configuration, as 6 cores are now used per cluster (the M2 Pro and M3 still have 4 cores per cluster). Furthermore, the memory bus has been reduced from 256 bits to 192 bits (150 GB/s vs. 200 GB/s). Thanks to the new architecture and higher clock rates, the new M3 Pro is still slightly faster.

The M3 Pro also integrates a new graphics card with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration via hardware. In the entry-level model, only 14 of the chip's 18 cores are used and support up to 3 displays simultaneously (internal and 2 external).

GPU and CPU can jointly access the shared memory on the package (unified memory). This is available in 18 or 36 GB variants and offers 150 GB/s maximum bandwidth (192 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.

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 37 billion transistors (-7.5% vs. Apple M2 Pro).

AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G

The AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G is a dual-core SoC designed for embedded systems that was announced in March 2019. It is similar to the Ryzen 3 3200U (or the 2200U with slightly increased clock speed) and based on the first generation of the Zen architecture. The Ryzen features two Zen cores with support for the thread-doubling SMT tech, clocked at 2.6 GHz - 3.5 GHz. The built-in Radeon RX Vega 3 iGPU has 3 CUs (192 unified shaders) clocked at up to 1,200 MHz. The default TDP is 15 W which makes the Ryzen a good fit for thin mid-range laptops.

In comparison to the faster Ryzen 3000 CPUs, the 3200U and therefore the R1606G is not using the newer Zen+ microarchitecture and is still manufactured in 14nm. Compared to the old Ryzen 3 2200U, the 3200U and R1606G therefore only offers a 100 MHz higher clock speed.

The R1606G is compatible with single-channel or dual-channel DDR4-2400 RAM. Please go to our Raven Ridge launch article for details on the architecture and more.