Apple announces new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

Apple has just unveiled new iterations of the high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with the M3 family of chips with up to 128GB of memory at its “Scary fast” event. Let’s dive into all the exciting new innovations they’ve brought to the table!

Let’s start off with the new 14-inch Pro notebook. Apple has now started offering users the option to configure their 14-inch MacBook Pro with the base M3 chip, lowering the price even further to just $1,599. The M3 chip on the 14-inch MacBook Pro can be configured with up to 11-core CPU and up to 14-core GPU with memory options of 8GB, 16GB, and 24GB along with storage options of 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. However, the base model will feature the M3 chip with an 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU which is still great for most users.

The regular M3 configuration is only available for the MacBook Pro in 14-inch, whilst the M3 Pro and M3 Max are available for both the 14-inch and 16-inch models.

The base M3 Pro features an 11-core CPU and a 14-core GPU and can be configured with up to a 12-core CPU and up to 18-core GPU. The memory options now start at 18GB, and is configurable up to 36GB along with storage options of 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. One interesting thing to note is that Apple used to offer up to a 19-core GPU with the M2 Pro, but is currently only offering an 18-core GPU. This does not mean that GPU Performance will be worse, it could simply mean that the improvements on those 18-cores are phenomenal enough to omit one of the cores.

The base M3 Max on the other hand boasts a 14-core CPU and a 30-core GPU and can be configured with up to a 16-core CPU and up to 40-core GPU. The memory options are now plenty, starting at 36GB, with options to configure it to 48GB, 64GB, 96GB, and a whopping 128 GB. However, the 96GB RAM variant is only available for the M3 Max with a 30-core GPU. If you configure the chip to have a 16-core CPU, and a 40-core GPU, your memory options will start at 48GB, instead of 32GB with the M2 Max, along with options to configure it to 64GB, or 128 GB. Here are the storage options for the M3 Max chips: 512GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, 4TB, and 8TB. Apple claims that the M3 Max provides up to 80% faster multithreaded performance than 16”‘inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max and the chip can perform over 18 trillion operations per second.

Apple has also upgraded the 16-core Neural Engine to now be 60 % faster when compared to the M1 family of chipsets and the new media engine now supports AV1 decoding. The M3 family also features “Dynamic Caching” which according to Apple, “unlike traditional GPUs, allocates the use of local memory in hardware in real time. With Dynamic Caching, only the exact amount of memory needed is used for each task. This is an industry first, transparent to developers, and the cornerstone of the new GPU architecture. It dramatically increases the average utilization of the GPU, which significantly increases performance for the most demanding pro apps and games.”

If you thought that was it, you would be wrong. there’s a lot more things that Apple discussed within just 30 minutes of the event. According to Apple, “With the M3 family of chips, hardware-accelerated ray tracing comes to the Mac for the first time. Ray tracing models the properties of light as it interacts with a scene, allowing apps to create extremely realistic and physically accurate images. This, along with the new graphics architecture, allows pro apps to deliver up to 2.5x the speed of the M1 family of chips. Game developers can use ray tracing for more accurate shadows and reflections, creating deeply immersive environments. Additionally, the new GPU brings hardware-accelerated mesh shading to the Mac, delivering greater capability and efficiency to geometry processing, and enabling more visually complex scenes in games and graphics-intensive apps. This breakthrough GPU architecture enables all of these enhancements and features while maintaining Apple silicon’s legendary power efficiency. In fact, the M3 GPU is able to deliver the same performance as M1 using nearly half the power, and up to 65 percent more performance at its peak.”

Not enough reason for you to upgrade? The new M3 MacBook Pros also come with a 20% higher SDR Brightness, with it now being at 600 nits instead of 500 nits on previous models, and most importantly, it comes in a brand new finish, (drumrolls please, wait for it…….) SPACE BLACK, which replaces Space Gray. Apple says that the new finish is ‘unmistakably pro’ and that “the finish features a breakthrough chemistry that forms an anodization seal to greatly reduce fingerprints.” However, only the M3 Pro and M3 Max will get the new Space Black finish, while the regular M3 variant will continue to offer color options of Silver and Space Gray.