Apple M3 Pro 12-Core vs AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D

Apple M3 Pro 12-Core

The Apple M3 Pro (12 Core) is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was launched in late 2023. It integrates a new 12-core CPU with 6 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 6 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz. There is also a slimmed-down 11-core variant with a 14-core GPU.

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). However, 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 top model, all 18 cores of the chip 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 9 7945HX3D

The AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D is a fast high-end laptop processor of the Dragon Range series. It offers 16 cores based on the Zen 4 architecture that supports hyperthreading (32 threads). The cores clock from 2.3 (base) up to 5.4 GHz (single core boost). Compared to the similar R9 7945HX, the 7945HX3D offers an additional 64 MB 3D V-Cache on one CCD-Cluster. This helps in some workloads that can use the additional fast cache (e.g. some games). The guaranteed base clock however was reduced from 2.5 to 2.3 GHz.

The performance of the R9 7945HX3D is similar to the R9 7945HX in workloads that wont make use of the bigger L3 cache. Most games however can use the additional memory. AMD e.g. was advertising the HX3D with 4% to 53% higher performance in 1080p high settings.

The Dragon Range series still uses a chiplet design with two CCD-clusters (each with 8 possible cores) in 5nm and an IO-die (including the memory controller and the Radeon 610M iGPU) in 6nm. The chip integrates 4x USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) ports (no USB4), 28 PCIe 5.0 lanes (for GPU and SSDs) and a dual-channel DDR5-5200 memory controller.

The R9 7945HX3D is rated at a TDP of 55 Watt and can be configured up to 75 Watt (cTDP).