The Apple M3 is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was introduced in late 2023. It integrates a new 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 4 efficiency cores running at up to 2.75 GHz. Apple claims that the CPU is up to 20% faster than in the old Apple M2 (3.5 GHz).
Due to the higher clock speeds and architecture improvements, the processor performance is also significantly better than the M2 in benchmarks (see e.g. Geekbench below) and can keep up with the fastest CPUs in short single-core tests (like the Raptor Lake i9-13950HX).
The M3 also integrates a new graphics adapter with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration. According to Apple, it is 20% faster than the GPU in the M2. The chip integrates again 10 GPU cores, but the cheaper variant only offers 8 cores (e.g. in the entry iMac). Furthermore, the GPU only supports 2 displays (an additional 6K60 display to the internal one).
Both GPU and CPU can access the unified memory on the package together. It is still available in 8, 16 and 24 GB variants and offers the same 100 GB/s maximum bandwidth (unlike the Pro models that feature a reduced memory bandwidth).
The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (versus 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded.
Unfortunately, the integrated wireless network module only supports Wi-Fi 6E (no Wi-Fi 7) and due to the support of only a single external monitor, the chip also has to make do with no Thunderbolt 4 (Thunderbolt 3 / USB 4 support only for up to 40 Gbit/s).
The chip is manufactured on the current 3nm TSMC process (N3B most likely) and contains 25 billion transistors (+25% vs. Apple M2). The 3nm process should also contribute to the excellent efficiency of the chip. Under load, the M3 CPU consumes approximately 20 Watt.
The AMD Ryzen 9 79 00 is a high-end desktop processorfrom the Raphael series with 12 cores and hyperthreading (SMT), which means it can process up to 24 threads simultaneously. Launched in early 2023, the Ryzen 9 7900 is the fastest 12-core processor with 65 watts TDP.
The Ryzen 9 7900 clocks at 3.7 GHz base clock and reaches up to 5.4 GHz on one core in Turbo mode. This is also the difference to the higher clocked Ryzen 9 7900X.
At first glance, the internal structure of the processor has not changed fundamentally. The AMD Ryzen 9 7900 is still based on the chiplet design consisting of two CCD clusters, each containing a CCX with 8 cores. However, the manufacturing process has been scaled down to 5 nm, which ensures higher clock rates. There is also the IO die, which contains the memory controller and the iGPU, among other things. This is now manufactured in a 6 nm structure width.
The AMD Ryzen 9 7900 can impress in games thanks to the significantly improved IPC.
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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