Apple M2 vs Apple M1 vs Apple M3
Apple M2
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The Apple M2 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2022 MacBook Air and, MacBook Pro 13. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 16 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with up to 2,4 GHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with up to 3,5 GHz and therefore higher than the M1 cores. The architecture should be similar to the A15 (iPhone 13) with Avalanche and Blizzard cores.
The chip features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 for a bandwidth of up to 100GB/s.
According to Apple, the M2 offers a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1. In our tests, the MacBook Pro 13 with active cooling was able to reach the 18% in Geekbench Multi. In other benchmarks we measured 12 to 15% gains compared to the M1. Therefore, the performance is now near the M1 Pro with 8 cores. The passively cooled MacBook Air may however suffer from throttling in longer load scenarios.
The integrated graphics card in the M2 offers 8 or 10 cores and a peak performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.
Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 16 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.
The Apple M2 includes 20 billion transistors (up from the 16 billion of the M1) and is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is rated at 20W what we also measured under CPU load.
Apple M1
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The Apple M1 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2020 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13, and Mac Mini. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 12 MB shared L2 cache. According to Apple the performance of these cores should be better than anything on the market (in late 2020). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3204 MHz.
The M1 is available in two TDP variants, a passive cooled 10 Watt variant for the MacBook Air and an active cooled faster variant for the MacBook Pro 13 and Mac Mini. Those should offer a better-sustained performance according to Apple.
The integrated graphics card in the M1 offers 8 cores (7 cores in the entry MacBook Air) and a peak performance of 2.6 teraflops. Apple claims that it is faster than any other iGPU at the time of announcement.
Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 11 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.
The Apple M1 includes 16 billion transistors (up from the 10 billion of the A12Z Bionic and therefore double the amount of a Tiger Lake-U chip like the i7-1185G7) and is manufactured in 5nm at TSMC.
Apple M3
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The Apple M3 is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was introduced in late 2023. It integrates a new 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 4 efficiency cores running at up to 2.75 GHz. Apple claims that the CPU is up to 20% faster than in the old Apple M2 (3.5 GHz).
Due to the higher clock speeds and architecture improvements, the processor performance is also significantly better than the M2 in benchmarks (see e.g. Geekbench below) and can keep up with the fastest CPUs in short single-core tests (like the Raptor Lake i9-13950HX).
The M3 also integrates a new graphics adapter with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration. According to Apple, it is 20% faster than the GPU in the M2. The chip integrates again 10 GPU cores, but the cheaper variant only offers 8 cores (e.g. in the entry iMac). Furthermore, the GPU only supports 2 displays (an additional 6K60 display to the internal one).
Both GPU and CPU can access the unified memory on the package together. It is still available in 8, 16 and 24 GB variants and offers the same 100 GB/s maximum bandwidth (unlike the Pro models that feature a reduced memory bandwidth).
The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (versus 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded.
Unfortunately, the integrated wireless network module only supports Wi-Fi 6E (no Wi-Fi 7) and due to the support of only a single external monitor, the chip also has to make do with no Thunderbolt 4 (Thunderbolt 3 / USB 4 support only for up to 40 Gbit/s).
The chip is manufactured on the current 3nm TSMC process (N3B most likely) and contains 25 billion transistors (+25% vs. Apple M2). The 3nm process should also contribute to the excellent efficiency of the chip. Under load, the M3 CPU consumes approximately 20 Watt.
Model | Apple M2 | Apple M1 | Apple M3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Series | Apple M2 | Apple M1 | Apple M3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Series: M3 |
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Clock | 2424 - 3480 MHz | 2064 - 3220 MHz | 2748 - 4056 MHz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
L1 Cache | 2 MB | 2 MB | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
L2 Cache | 20 MB | 16 MB | 4 MB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
L3 Cache | 8 MB | 8 MB | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cores / Threads | 8 / 8 | 8 / 8 | 8 / 8 4 x 4.1 GHz Apple M3 P-Core 4 x 2.7 GHz Apple M3 E-Core | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TDP | 20 Watt | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Transistors | 20000 Million | 16000 Million | 25000 Million | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Technology | 5 nm | 5 nm | 3 nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Features | ARMv8 Instruction Set | ARMv8 Instruction Set | ARMv8 Instruction Set | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
iGPU | Apple M2 10-Core GPU ( - 1398 MHz) | Apple M1 8-Core GPU | Apple M3 10-Core GPU | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Architecture | ARM | ARM | ARM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Announced | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manufacturer | www.apple.com | www.apple.com |
Benchmarks
Average Benchmarks Apple M2 → 100% n=19
Average Benchmarks Apple M1 → 88% n=19
Average Benchmarks Apple M3 → 122% n=19

* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation