Apple M3 Pro 11-Core vs Intel Core i3-10110Y

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).

Intel Core i3-10110Y

The Intel Core i3-10110Y is an extremely power efficient dual-core SoC for small laptops and tablets that was announced in August 2019. The faster models, like the Core i5-10310Y offer two additional cores however.

Performance

While we have not tested a single system built around the 10110Y as of August 2023, we have tested at least one laptop utilizing the 10100Y, an insignificantly slower chip (Amber Lake, 2 cores, 4 threads, up to 3.9 GHz.) Based on that, expect the 10110Y to be noticeably faster than the AMD 3050e. Performance of this kind is totally sufficient for basic day-to-day activities, as of late 2022.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are.

The integrated graphics adapter however is still the same as in the previous generations. It should be still called Intel UHD Graphics 615 and runs at 300 - 1000 MHz in the i3. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a VP9 and H.265 de- and encoder.

The TDP is specified at 7 Watts but can be varied from 5.5 to 9 Watt from the manufacturer (cTDP up/down) resulting in different performance (especially Turbo durations). Interestingly, the faster Core i5-10210Y with two more cores can be configured to lower 4.5 Watt.