Learn How Apple’s M3 Max Achieves Incredible Power and Efficiency
Apple’s M3 Max is a tremendously strong processor that considerably boosts Apple Silicon’s CPU and GPU performance. It’s received a lot of attention, but is it quicker than the quickest Windows laptops?
To discover out, we compared it to the Lenovo Legion 9i, a gaming laptop outfitted with the superfast Intel Core i9-13980HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, and the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, which is outfitted with the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX and the RTX 4090. Due to testing and cross-platform compatibility limitations, we can’t directly compare the MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 Max to the Lenovo and Asus in many benchmarks, notably gaming. But we could compare enough to obtain a sense of how these distinct chips compare to one another.
A Quick Examination of Architectures
The Apple M3 Max is a system on a chip (SoC) based on ARM that is now at the top of Apple Silicon’s portfolio. It is the first chip manufactured utilizing a 3nm technology with a new GPU architecture. Apple improved the performance cores’ speed by 15% and the efficiency cores’ speed by 30% over the M2. Overall, Apple promises a 20% to 25% increase in performance. On the GPU side, Dynamic Caching is one technology that speeds up several GPU operations, while mesh shading and hardware-accelerated ray tracing will aid gamers.
The M3 Max contains up to 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, with a memory bandwidth of up to 400GB/s. This is paired with up to 128GB of RAM, an increase from the previous capacity of 96 GB. The MacBook Pro 14 with the 16-core CPU/40-core GPU M3 Max was reviewed.
The Intel Core i9-13980HX CPU has 24 cores (eight Performance cores and sixteen Efficient cores) and 32 threads. The Performance cores can reach speeds of up to 5.60GHz, while the efficient cores can reach speeds of up to 4.0GHz. It is at the pinnacle of Intel’s mobile Raptor Lake series, focusing on higher clock rates and more cores for performance advantages over its 12th-generation predecessor.
The AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX CPU is a 55-watt processor with 16 cores and 32 threads that can run at up to 5.4GHz. It sits at the top of AMD’s mobile CPU lineup and is built on the Zen 4 architecture. It is capable of ramping up to 75 watts and even greater clock rates, offering blazingly fast performance.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is the fastest mobile GPU on the market today, utilizing a slew of innovative technologies such as Shader Execution Reordering and DLSS 3 to deliver outstanding gaming performance. It can also accelerate a variety of activities in creative, design, and engineering applications, making it a popular choice in high-end performance laptops.
Synthetic Benchmarks
The M3 Max is the quickest laptop CPU we’ve tested in the Geekbench 6 synthetic benchmark, which cycles through a slew of CPU-intensive applications. The Core i9-13980HX performs admirably, but it cannot keep up. I’ve added a few other laptops to demonstrate the considerable performance boost provided by Apple’s fastest mobile CPU.
The Cinebench R24 benchmark, which examines both the CPU and GPU in generating a complicated image, yields more varied results. The Core i9-19380HX was quicker in the multi-core test but slower in the single-core test, demonstrating the chip’s 24 CPU cores’ raw power. In the GPU test, the RTX 4090 was likewise nearly twice as quick as the M3 Max.
Because we did not test the ROG Strix Scar 17 in the most recent versions of these benchmarks, its results are not included here. However, it is expected to compete with the Legion 9i.
Real-Life Benchmarks
Adobe’s Premiere Pro is a great example of the type of software that appeals to the creator market, which Apple is aiming for with the MacBook Pro. It’s a demanding program that requires a powerful CPU, GPU, and enough RAM.
The PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark runs in a live version of Premiere Pro and so offers an accurate representation of the performance of a real-world laptop. The most recent version puts a wide range of video encoding, decoding, and GPU-accelerated effects to the test to offer a realistic and complete picture of real-world performance.
Adobe’s Premiere Pro is a great example of the type of software that appeals to the creator market, which Apple is aiming for with the MacBook Pro. It’s a demanding program that requires a powerful CPU, GPU, and enough RAM.
The PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark runs in a live version of Premiere Pro and so offers an accurate representation of the performance of a real-world laptop. The most recent version puts a wide range of video encoding, decoding, and GPU-accelerated effects to the test to offer a realistic and complete picture of real-world performance.
Given the sheer raw might of the RTX 4090 in the other two machines, these results are especially amazing for the M3 Max. Apple has optimized the M3 Max to accelerate the types of activities that will keep professional artists productive.
