Apple M3 10-Core GPU vs Apple M1 7-Core GPU

Apple M3 10-Core GPU

The 10-core Apple M3 GPU is an integrated graphics adapter designed by Apple that features 10 cores. This iGPU is built into the Apple M3 SoC and it uses the unified memory architecture (up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 with 100 GB/s bandwidth). Compared to M2 series GPUs, this new graphics adapter uses a new architecture with support for mesh shading and ray tracing. Dynamic caching is another new feature worth mentioning - it is coming to optimize shared memory usage.

In our testing, the M3 GPU (10 cores) mostly was 5% to 20% faster than the 10-core M2 GPU depending on the task.

Just like the rest of the Apple M3 chip, the graphics adapter is manufactured on a 3 nm TSMC process (possibly N3B). Our MBP 14 review revealed sustained power consumption figures of around 15 W for the iGPU.

Apple M1 7-Core GPU

The Apple M1 GPU is an integrated graphics card offering 7 cores (1 deactivated core in the entry MacBook Air) designed by Apple and integrated in the Apple M1 SoC. According to Apple it is faster and more energy efficient as competing products (like the Tiger Lake Xe GPU). The peak performance of the high end variant with 8 cores is 2.6 teraflops, therefore the 7 core version should offer around 2.3 teraflops. Thanks to the unified memory architecture it should have fast access to the RAM.

The Apple M1 is manufactured in the modern 5nm process at TSMC and should offer an excellent energy efficiency.