Apple M3 Pro 12-Core vs Intel Core i5-14500HX

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).

Intel Core i5-14500HX

The Intel Core i5-14500HX is a high-end CPU from the Raptor-Lake-HX Refresh series (RPL-H). The CPU offers all 6 performance cores (P-cores, Golden Cove or Raptor Cove architecture) and 8 efficiency cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture). The P-cores support hyperthreading (therefore 20 threads together) and clock from 2.4 to 4.9 GHz (single-core turbo). The E-cores clock from 1.9 - 3.7 GHz and should offer comparable performance to old Skylake cores (e.g. i7-6920HQ).

Performance

Thanks to the higher clock rates of the Rocket Lake series, the i5-14500HX can reach the level of the old Core i9-12900H and is therefore a very fast mobile CPU that is ideal for all areas of application.

Graphics unit

Like its predecessor, Intel integrates an Intel Xe-based graphics unit. In the 14500HX, all 96 EUs are activated and clock at up to 1.55 GHz.

Features

Like Alder-Lake-H, Raptor-Lake-H has partially integrated WiFi 6E and Thunderbolt 4 (4x). The integrated memory controller now supports faster DDR5-5200 memory. The integrated Gaussian and Neural Accelerator (GNA) is still installed in version 3.0. The Quick Sync 8 media engine is the same as in Rocket Lake and supports MPEG-2, AVC, VC-1 decode, JPEG, VP8 decode, VP9, HEVC and AV1 decode. The chip supports PCIe 5.0 x8 for a dGPU and two PCIe 4.0 x4 for SSDs. The PCH also offers PCIe Gen3 x12.

Power consumption

The Intel Core i5-14500HX is specified with 55 watts TDP (PL2 157 watts). The processor continues to be manufactured using the improved Intel 7 process (10 nm SuperFin).