Apple M3 8-Core GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop) vs Apple M3 9-Core GPU

Apple M3 8-Core GPU

The Apple M3 GPU is an integrated graphics card offering 10 cores designed by Apple and integrated in the Apple M3 SoC. It uses the unified memory architecture of the M3 SoC (up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 with 100 GB/s bandwidth). The GPU uses a new architecture with support for mesh shading and ray tracing. Dynamic caching is also a new feature that should only us as much shared memory as needed.

The old M2 SoC showed a difference of around 15% between the 8-core and 10-core variant. Therefore, we expect a similar difference for the M3 models. This means, the M3 8-core version should be slightly faster than the 10-core GPU in the Apple M2.

The M3 chip is manufactured in the new 3nm process at TSMC (most likely N3B). The power limit should be around the same 15 Watt as the 10-core variant.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 is a fast desktop graphics card based on the Pascal architecture. It was announced in May 2016 and offers all 2,560 shader of the used GP104 chip. Furthermore, the GPU is coupled with 8 GB GDDR5X graphics memory using a 256 Bit interface (10 GHz, 320 GB/s). The chip is manufactured at TSMC in 16nm (FinFET). The TDP is specified at 180 Watt and therefore slightly higher than the predecessor, the GTX 980 with 165 Watt.

Apple M3 9-Core GPU

The Apple M3 9-Core GPU is a self-designed graphics card in the Apple M3 SoC and according to Apple with nine of the ten cores. It was first used in the iPad Air 2025. According to Apple, the GPU uses a new architecture and now offers dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration.

The GPU can access 8 GB LPDDR5-6400 unified memory via a 128-bit memory bus (max 100 GBit/s). Thanks to dynamic caching, the graphics card only reserves as much memory as is required.

The SoC is manufactured in the current 3nm process (probably N3B) at TSMC and is therefore very energy-efficient. The graphics unit can use around 15 watts of the TDP.