Apple MacBook Pro M3 vs MacBook Pro M2: How fast are the new laptops?

Apple recently announced new processors at its Scary Fast event. The new chips will not only power the new MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch along with the new iMac 24-inch, but are also likely to power the MacBook Air series and the next iPad Pro moving forward. But just how much more firepower does these new chipsets come with?

Apple pitched the new M3 MacBook Pro laptops against the older M1 chips during the event, instead of its immediate predecessors. So, if all you know about the M3 family is from the launch keynote from earlier this week, you’re probably wondering how fast the M3 chips are compared to the M2 chips. Here’s a detailed head-to-head to help you out.

Apple M3 processors vs M2 processors: Understanding the lineup

Before we dive into the numbers, let’s take a look at lineup on offer by Apple. While the older M2 chips on MacBook Pros were only available in two variants – the M2 Pro and the M2 Max, the M3 series includes three chipsets. These are the M3, the M3 Pro and M3 Max.

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While you can always compare the Pro and Max variants against each other, what’s new is that you can now grab a MacBook Pro with the base M3 chip, a processor that doesn’t have a ‘Pro’ in its name but is still quite capable.

MacBook Pro M3 series vs MacBook Pro M2 series

The new M3 MacBook Pros come with up to 128GB unified memory, while the M2 MacBook Pros were capped to a maximum of 96GB. Both the M3 and M2 MacBook Pros support up to 8TB storage. The M3 MacBook Pros also have an edge in graphical performance with up to 40-core GPUs with hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, something previous MacBooks have lacked.

If you’re an enthusiast who wants the absolute best possible performance and are trying to figure out if the new M3 series laptops are for you, here’s a more in-depth look at every aspect of the new M3 processor family compared to older generations.

Efficiency cores

The efficiency cores are the cores in your CPU that are used when the machine is not running resource-heavy programs and tasks. When it comes to the efficiency cores, the new M3 processors are 30 per cent faster than the M2 family, and 50 per cent faster than the M1 family.

Performance cores

The performance cores are the cores of the CPU that are engaged when the machine is running heavier programs and games that generally demand more processing power. These cores are only engaged when needed to preserve battery life. When it comes to the performance cores, the M3 family of processors is just 15 per cent faster than the M2 family, but 30 per cent faster than the M1 family.

Rendering performance

If you’re a creator who plans on using the new MacBook Pros to edit videos on the go, one aspect you would want to know more about is the rendering performance of the M3, M2 and M1 chipsets. The new M3 family can deliver up to 1.8 times the rendering speeds compared to M2 chipsets and up to 2.5 times the speeds compared to the M1 chips.

Other differences

Most of the other aspects of the M3 MacBook Pros are very similar to the 2023 M2 series and 2021 M1 series MacBook Pros. The displays are the same size and resolution, all with a notch, support for external displays is capped at two screens (except the base M3, which is capped at one), and the size and other dimensions are barely different.

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However, note that the base M3 MacBook Pro now comes with one Thunderbolt 4 port less, while the others still feature three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, an SDXC card reader and a MagSafe charger on the left. All these laptops also support Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E.

Who the new M3 MacBooks are for?

The new M3 MacBooks are, no doubt, immensely powerful machines for creators and other working professionals. If you’re someone coming from an Intel-based MacBook or another laptop, you may want to get the M3 for best possible performance numbers. However, if you’re already on M2 MacBook Pros, an update may not really be worth it, unless you need the small changes in CPU and GPU performance.

The same is the case for the M1 family MacBook Pros. While the difference between the M3 and M1 MacBooks is much more significant, especially when running heavier programs like video editing software, not everyone may want to shell out the extra money for 30 per cent faster performance. But if you do, the M3 MacBook Pros are a great investment.