Apple M4 10-core GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 vs Apple M4 Pro 20-Core GPU
Apple M4 10-core GPU
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The 10-core Apple M4 GPU is a graphics adapter built into the 9-core and 10-core Apple M4 processors that has direct access to fast on-package LPDDR5x-7500 RAM (120 GB/s bandwidth) as well as hardware support for ray tracing and mesh shading and other modern technologies. It supports up to 3 displays with an "8K" resolution attainable on a single display. It also can HW-decode a few popular video codecs including first and foremost AVC, HEVC and AV1.
Performance
As our Fall 2024 Mac mini review confirmed, the iGPU is fast enough to run many 2023 and 2024 games at 1080p on low or medium quality settings. It appears its real-world performance is almost as good as the GeForce GTX 1650 Laptop. That being said, very few games have been compiled specifically for Apple silicon Macs meaning most titles have to be run via emulation layers. Some of them are displayed with visual artefacts as a result, or don't start at all.
- Сyberpunk 2077 2.1 Phantom Liberty (1080p, Med): 28 fps
M4-powered iPad Pros will be much slower in long-term GPU-intensive workloads than M4 iMacs, Mac minis and MacBook Pros due to the lack of proper cooling.
Power consumption
In M4 Mac minis, the GPU gets just slightly over a half of the total 40 W power budget allocated to the entire M4 chip. Needless to say, it has to be a lot more modest in iPad Pros where the entire M4 chip can consume ~14 W in short-term tasks and less than half of that in long-term tasks.
Just like the rest of the M4 chip, the graphics adapter is manufactured on a "second generation 3 nm" TSMC process which is still cutting-edge as of late 2024.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
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The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 is a mid-range desktop graphics card. It is based on the GA106 Ampere chip and offers 8 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 128 Bit memory bus. It offers 2,560 cores and supports PCIe 4.0.
The performance is similar to the older GeForce RTX 2060 and therefore best suited for 1080p gaming of modern and demanding games in high settings.
The GA106 chip offers 3,840 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 1,920 INT32 ALUs). With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).
The GA106 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip). The TDP of the RTX 3050 is specified at 130 Watt and therefore better than the previous RTX 2060 (160 Watt).
Apple M4 Pro 20-Core GPU
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The Apple M4 Pro GPU (20 cores) is an integrated graphics adapter designed by Apple that's built into the 14-core Apple M4 Pro SoC. It features 20 "cores" and has access to at least 24 GB of fast 273 GB/s LPDDR5x on-package RAM depending on the configuration. As is typical for graphics adapters released in 2024, it has hardware support for ray tracing as well as mesh shading and other modern technologies. It also supports external displays with resolutions as high as "8K" and it can HW-decode a few popular video codecs such as h.264, h.265 and AV1.
Performance
Its gaming performance is at least as good as that of the GTX 1660 Ti Laptop. Please keep in mind that very few games have been compiled specifically for Apple silicon Macs meaning most titles have to be run via emulation layers. Some of them are displayed with visual artefacts as a result, or don't start at all.
- The Witcher 3 1080p Ultra = 53 fps (close to the GTX 1660 Ti Laptop)
- Baldur's Gate 3 1440p Ultra = 42 fps (close to the GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop)
- Cyberpunk 2077 2.1 Phantom Liberty 1080p Ultra = 40 fps (close to the GTX 1660 Ti Laptop)
In synthetic benchmarks, the iGPU is about 30% faster than the old M3 Pro GPU and is even on par with a fast GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU (3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited).
Power consumption
When under heavy CPU and GPU load, the iGPU portion of the 14-core M4 Pro consumes about 32 W according to monitoring software "powermetrics". With no load, it makes do with as little as 1 W to 3 W.
Just like the rest of the Apple M4 Pro chip, the integrated graphics adapter is manufactured on a "second generation 3 nm" TSMC process which is still cutting-edge as of late 2024.
| Apple M4 10-core GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 | Apple M4 Pro 20-Core GPU | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apple M4 Series |
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| Pipelines | 10 - unified | 2560 - unified | 20 - unified | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Memory Type | LPDDR5X-7500 | GDDR6 | LPDDR5x-8533 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Shared Memory | yes | no | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Power Consumption | 8 Watt | 130 Watt | 45 Watt | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| technology | 3 nm | 8 nm | 3 nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date of Announcement | 07.05.2024 | 04.01.2022 | 30.10.2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Predecessor | M3 10-Core GPU | M3 Pro 18-Core GPU | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Codename | Ampere GA106 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Architecture | Ampere | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Core Speed | 1552 - 1777 (Boost) MHz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Memory Speed | 1750 MHz | 8533 MHz | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Memory Bus Width | 128 Bit Bit | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Max. Amount of Memory | 8 GB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| API | DirectX 12_2, Shader 6.6, OpenGL 4.6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transistors | 12 Billion | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Raytracing Cores | 20 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Memory Bandwidth | 273 GB/s | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Displays | 3 Displays (max.) |
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Benchmarks
3DM Vant. Perf. total + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
specvp12 sw-03 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
Cinebench R15 OpenGL 64 Bit + Apple M4 10-core GPU
GFXBench T-Rex HD Offscreen C24Z16 + Apple M4 10-core GPU
Average Benchmarks Apple M4 10-core GPU → 0% n=0
Average Benchmarks NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 → 0% n=0
Average Benchmarks Apple M4 Pro 20-Core GPU → 0% n=0
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
Game Benchmarks
The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.
Total War Pharaoh
2023
Cyberpunk 2077
2023
Baldur's Gate 3
2023
Company of Heroes 3
2023
Sons of the Forest
2023
Atomic Heart
2023
Returnal
2023
Hogwarts Legacy
2023
Dead Space Remake
2023
The Witcher 3 v4
2023
High On Life
2023
FIFA 23
2022
The Quarry
2022
F1 22
2022
Ghostwire Tokyo
2022
Cyberpunk 2077 1.6
2022
GRID Legends
2022
Elden Ring
2022
Dying Light 2
2022
God of War
2022
Halo Infinite
2021
Farming Simulator 22
2021
Battlefield 2042
2021
Forza Horizon 5
2021
Riders Republic
2021
Back 4 Blood
2021
Far Cry 6
2021
Alan Wake Remastered
2021
New World
2021
F1 2021
2021
Cyberpunk 2077 1.0
2020
Dirt 5
2020
Watch Dogs Legion
2020
Call of Duty Mobile
2020
Genshin Impact
2020
Crysis Remastered
2020
Horizon Zero Dawn
2020
Death Stranding
2020
F1 2020
2020
Borderlands 3
2019
Control
2019
Anno 1800
2019
Far Cry New Dawn
2019
Metro Exodus
2019
Strange Brigade
2018
PUBG Mobile
2018
Far Cry 5
2018
X-Plane 11.11
2018
Dota 2 Reborn
2015
The Witcher 3
2015
GTA V
2015
Asphalt 8: Airborne
2013
Asphalt 9: Legends
2013Average Gaming Apple M4 10-core GPU → 100%
Average Gaming 30-70 fps → 100%
Average Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 → 246%
Average Gaming 30-70 fps → 221%
Average Gaming Apple M4 Pro 20-Core GPU → 182%
Average Gaming 30-70 fps → 169%
| Apple M4 10-core GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 | Apple M4 Pro 20-Core GPU | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| low | med. | high | ultra | QHD | 4K | low | med. | high | ultra | QHD | 4K | low | med. | high | ultra | QHD | 4K | ||||
| Total War Pharaoh | 53 | 46 | 45 | 39 | 27.1 | 65 | 55 | 51 | 51 | 49 | |||||||||||
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 34 | 27 | 23 | 20 | 50 | 48 | 45 | 40 | 25 | ||||||||||||
| Baldur's Gate 3 | 44 | 36 | 32 | 30 | 91 | 78 | 64 | 62 | 43 | ||||||||||||
| Diablo Immortal | 59 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Call of Duty Mobile | 78.2 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Genshin Impact | 80 | 79 | 87 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 129 | 48 | 44 | 39 | 27 | 243 | 106 | 96 | 79 | 58 | 30 | 181 | 110 | 100 | 87 | 57 | |||||
| PUBG Mobile | 72 | 40 | 41 | ||||||||||||||||||
| The Witcher 3 | 120 | 42.8 | 28.6 | 363 | 282 | 168 | 65 | 44 | 85 | 53 | |||||||||||
| Asphalt 8: Airborne | 85.8 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Asphalt 9: Legends | 75 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Apple M4 10-core GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 | Apple M4 Pro 20-Core GPU | |||||||||||||||||||
| low | med. | high | ultra | QHD | 4K | low | med. | high | ultra | QHD | 4K | low | med. | high | ultra | QHD | 4K | < 30 fps < 60 fps < 120 fps ≥ 120 fps | 3 2 2 | 1 3 1 | 1 5 2 | 2 5 2 | 2 | | < 30 fps < 60 fps < 120 fps ≥ 120 fps | 2 | 1 1 | 1 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | < 30 fps < 60 fps < 120 fps ≥ 120 fps | 1 2 1 | 2 2 | 2 3 | 3 2 | 1 3 | |
For more games that might be playable and a list of all games and graphics cards visit our Gaming List
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