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First Benchmark Results Surface for M3 Chip in New Macs

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The first benchmark results for the standard M3 chip surfaced in the Geekbench 6 database today, providing a closer look at the chip's CPU performance improvements.

M3-Chip-Apple-Event-Slide.jpg

Based on the results so far, the M3 chip has single-core and multi-core scores of around 3,000 and 11,700, respectively. The standard M2 chip has single-core and multi-core scores of around 2,600 and 9,700, respectively, so the M3 chip is up to 20% faster than the M2 chip, as Apple claimed during its "Scary Fast" event on Monday.

Geekbench 6 multi-core scores:
  • M3 chip: ~11,700 (+20% vs. M2 chip)
  • M2 chip: ~9,700 (+17% vs. M1 chip)
  • M1 chip: ~8,315
It's unclear if the results are for the new 14-inch MacBook Pro or iMac, both of which are available with the standard M3 chip, but performance should be similar for both machines. The results have a "Mac15,3" identifier, which Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously reported was for a laptop with the same display resolution as a 14-inch MacBook Pro.

The standard M3 chip is equipped with an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, and it supports up to 24GB of unified memory. The chip has improved GPU architecture with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading, which will make high-end games look more realistic. It also has a 16-core Neural Engine for AI.

M3-Chip-Performance.jpg

We have yet to see any Geekbench results for the higher-end M3 Pro and M3 Max chips available in most new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.

Article Link: First Benchmark Results Surface for M3 Chip in New Macs
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/01/m3-chip-benchmark-results/
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Just for reference this is only slightly slower in single core performance than the most powerful Intel chip, slightly more powerful than the most speced out intel Mac Pro from late 2019 in both single and multi core, and going by this, the Pro and Max will definitely be more powerful than say, another ARM based chip that is coming out in the middle of next year.
 
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eicca said:
So the base M3 is six times faster in single core and four times faster in multi core than my current Mac Pro, while consuming a tenth or less of the electricity.

That’s really amazing.

Drop an M3 Mac Mini and I’m all over it.
Click to expand...

Kinda pointless comparing performance 13 years apart.
I'm pretty sure that your 2010 Mac Pro has a much larger performance gap compared to a 1997 PowerMac.
 
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I remember the doldrums during the intel mac days, with single digit increases being generous. Once Apple put hot intel chips in a thin enclosure, we said goodbye to any gains from intel's "new" processors in an updated mac.

Hoping to see a m3 mini and m3 Max Studio soon!

I also want to see new cinebench tests, which can also test GPUs. Cinebench 2023 has been updated to take advantage of any RT capabilities in the m3 chips. When they say 2.5x faster in Redshift, they may mean it. RT additions are no joke for 3d artists.

minik said:
Pave the way for a re-introduction of 12-inch MacBook in 2024? This will make me spend the money.
Click to expand...
I would LOVE a super tiny mac laptop again. I wonder if my eyes would ;-)
 
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To me, it would make more sense to put the the plain Jane M3 in the MacBook Air, and have the MacBook Pros have only the Pro and Max versions. That would help differentiate the two lines of laptops.

Also wish the iMac got the Pro and Max. Maybe bring back the iMac Pro at 27" or 32", and do the same thing as the MacBooks: plain Jane in the "regular" iMac and Pro and Max in the iMac Pro.

This is just me daydreaming, and know it'll never happen, but I'd love to see what Apple would do with a blade server setup. From the various graphics Apple has shown of the motherboards of its AS Macs, the motherboard's pretty small. Optimize it for a blade server setup, and you could probably fit a boatload of them in a regular 42U rack.
 
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Single core is the most important for me, as I often do programming stuff that can't be parallelized. So even on a 16 core CPU only one core is used and it is sad that single core speeds hardly grow any more. Of course they are limited by the speed of light and the density on the CPU.
 
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The medians are 3018 / 11671. That's up 14.7% / 19.8% from the Mac mini's M2.

Geekbench lists the clock as 4.05 GHz, but I wouldn't fully trust that yet; it sometimes merely guesses what the clock is. But if true, then the clock is up 16.4%, so single-threaded IPC is actually 1.5% worse than before (which is surprising, given that memory bandwidth on the non-Pro hasn't changed), and multi-threaded IPC is only up 2.9%.

Which… for a two-generation jump doesn't seem so great? But again, it's possible that Geekbench is wrong about the clock. Or that these results don't reflect final shipping machines. Or that it is not, in fact, a two-generation jump; that these are actually A16-derived cores (but the GPU raytracing feature would suggest otherwise).

Of course, ignoring clock changes, a 15%/20% improvement in 18 months is pretty good. The clock steadily increasing just worries me because, well, they're not gonna be running the M7 at 6 GHz…
 
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guzhogi said:
To me, it would make more sense to put the the plain Jane M3 in the MacBook Air, and have the MacBook Pros have only the Pro and Max versions. That would help differentiate the two lines of laptops.

Also wish the iMac got the Pro and Max. Maybe bring back the iMac Pro at 27" or 32", and do the same thing as the MacBooks: plain Jane in the "regular" iMac and Pro and Max in the iMac Pro.
Click to expand...

The 14" MBP with just the M3 is the perfect laptop for me. I don't need the power of the Pro or Max line. But I went for the 14" MBP M1 Pro for the screen.
 
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Faster clock and Geekbench. Hope these Mac models do not run too hot. Good news for a speed bump though!
 
So let me get this straight, a laptop with m3 max will be faster than a mac studio with m2 max? Seems like anyone who bought a mac studio m2 max in the past 1-2 months got taken for a ride.

Edit: for those disagreeing, rumors are now saying M3 Max outperforms M2 ultra (in Geekbench 6 at least). If so, this makes it even more egregious! Mac Pro released a mere 4.5 months ago is already being bested by a laptop ?
 
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