Apple announces hardware-accelerated ray tracing with the new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chipsets

• Apple has introduced the new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chipsets at its Scary Fast event.
• Apple has introduced hardware-accelerated ray tracing with its new chipsets.
• The company has also announced the new MacBook Pro line-up with the new chipsets.

Cupertino tech giant Apple on Tuesday hosted its “Scary Fast” event to announce the new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chipsets. The company also launched the MacBook Pro and the 24-inch iMac that are powered by the newly announced chipsets.

“With 3-nanometer technology, a next-generation GPU architecture, a higher-performance CPU, faster Neural Engine, and support for even more unified memory, M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max are the most advanced chips ever built for a personal computer,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.

Apple M3 chipsets

The biggest announcements from the Scary Fast event are the new M3 chipsets from Apple, which succeed the M2 chipsets launched in January 2023. The M3 chipsets are based on a 3-nanometer process, enabling more transistors to be packed into a smaller space.

The M3 chipsets have received a big update in the GPU department, helping professionals and gamers alike.

Apple brings hardware-accelerated ray tracing with M3

In a huge boost to gaming, the Apple M3 chipsets bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the devices, a first for the company’s chipsets and something that has been earlier seen on Nvidia and AMD’s chipsets.

This will enable game developers to improve the shadows and reflections in their games on devices with Apple silicon.

Apple M3

The Apple M3 chipset is equipped with an eight-core CPU that includes four performance cores and four efficiency cores. The company has claimed that it is up to 35% faster than the M1 chipset. It supports up to 24GB unified memory and one external display.

Coming to the GPU, the new M3 chipset is equipped with a 10-core GPU with a next-gen architecture, which the company says makes it 65% faster than the M1 chipset.

Apple has not compared the new chipset with the M2 chipset that was introduced last year.

Apple M3 Pro

The M3 Pro, the mid-range offering in the series, comes with a 12-core CPU with six performance cores and six efficiency cores. The company has claimed that the CPU is up to 30% faster than the M1 Pro for single-threaded tasks. The M3 Pro supports up to 36GB of unified memory.

The chipset comes with an 18-core GPU that is claimed to be up to 40% faster than the M1 Pro chipset.

Apple M3 Max

The top-end M3 Max chipset comes with a 16-core CPU with 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores. It supports up to 128GB of unified memory. Apple has claimed the M3 Max is up to 80% faster than the M1 Max and up to 50% faster than the M2 Max.

It comes with a large 40-core GPU that is claimed to be up to 50% faster than the M1 Max.

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