Mesh shaders, ray tracing, and space black finish?
No, believe it or not, you didn't just travel back to 2019.
You watched Apple's scary fast event announcing, among other things, their latest M3 chip lineup.
But, while some of what they talked about felt a little...
yesterday's news, but magical this time, typical Apple,
the rest of it was full of some pretty big dunks on the rest of the computer industry,
which is also becoming kinda typical Apple.
I mean, here, think about all the variety in the world of PC laptops.
Apple's, by contrast, are downright boring.
They don't even have touchscreens, for crying out loud.
And yet, they deliver time and again on what matters,
so effectively that I can't even blame folks for flocking to them.
Say it with me, PC industry, nothing else matters until you get these things right.
Power efficiency, performance,
and portability.
Come to think of it, now that they've got a new process node, the number three is everywhere here.
Three nanometer on the M3 chip with three main M3 SKUs.
The announcement video is 30 minutes 31 seconds long, held on October the 30th in 2023.
What is next? Are they gonna make me write three segues to today's sponsor?
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Apple's main focus today was showing off, once again, the most powerful laptops we've ever created, which is kind of a no-doy moment.
I mean, why would you make a new one that isn't better?
But after all those years of Intel missing their tick-tock development cycle and rehashing the same 14 nanometer chips,
it kind of makes sense that Apple feels the need to rub some salt in their teeth.
Or rub some salt in their exes' wounds and clarify that, yes, generational improvements are actually a thing.
Let's start with the GPU.
They're claiming that their new three nanometer hotness is the biggest leap forward in graphics architecture ever for Apple Silicon.
And considering what they had before, they're probably right.
Hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shaders, while nothing new to PC gamers, are
certainly going to be a key part of their path toward making games look incredible on the Mac.
Alan Wake 2, for example, just came out to rave reviews over their implementations of these key technologies.
But while the game looks amazing, older 10 series NVIDIA cards struggle with it due to Alan Wake 2's
requirement for mesh shaders having dropped support for vertex shaders altogether.
So, while Apple's announcements might not sound impressive if you've been hearing these words for almost half a decade,
in typical Apple fashion, they're showing up to the party just in time for their implementation to
actually be useful.
Kind of smart, really.
But they've also got some outright new stuff, like dynamic caching.
In a nutshell, mSilicon Macs use unified memory that is shared between the CPU and the GPU, and
normally, some portion of that memory would be reserved for the GPU by looking at the
maximum amount it could possibly need for the most intense parts of a game or a video editing workload, and then
holding that all the time.
But now,
M3 can dynamically determine exactly
UND EXACTLY
how much memory it actually needs in any given moment and allocate that to the GPU.
It's on all three of the new chips,
there's that number again, and it supposedly
dramatically increases the average utilization of the GPU.
We're gonna have to wait and test it for ourselves, of course,
but if it's done well, this is a major benefit of a tightly integrated system.
Though you'll be paying a major premium for it, especially if you shell out
for the 40-core GPU version of the M3 Macs rather than the 30-core base one.
Cutting-edge costs though, and if they're vague and nebulous slides are to be believed,
M3's performance per watt is about to put even more pressure on the likes of Intel, who recently resorted to rehashing old CPUs
again with their 14th gen desktop processors.
14 is really not Intel's number, hey?
Speaking of Intel and CPUs, this whole event had major jilted ex-lover vibes.
Am I right? Like, how many times did they mention Team Blue?
Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, but be that as it may, the CPUs on these new chips look very, uh,
so long, see you later, don't need you, impressive.
First, not only are the P-cores and the E-cores 30 and 50% faster than the M1 respectively,
but they've improved the branch prediction on both and
strategically juiced up core counts, so the regular M3 in the now entry-level
14-inch MacBook, buh-bye 13-inch model, is an 8-core CPU with a 10-core GPU and support for up to
24 gigs of unified memory. The M3 Pro sports 12 CPU cores,
18 cores for graphics, and up to 36 gigs of unified memory.
That is a pretty good amount of memory for a laptop, and it's not even close to the Max,
the M3 Max that is, that offers up to a whopping 16 CPU cores, up to 40 GPU cores,
and up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory, a feature that previously was only seen on desktop Macs.
The only thing I don't like about all of this is Apple's de-emphasis on what kind of CPU cores we're looking at.
See, this generation, it's not a problem yet, because only the Max SKU deviated from their previous
one-to-one ratio of performance to efficiency cores, and it did so in a positive way, with a three
three-to-one ratio of performance to efficiency cores, and it did so in a positive way, with a three
three-to-one split.
But, I also kind of feel like we're being primed to not think about what kind of cores we're getting, so that maybe they could go
the other way in the future.
But that's for future Linus to complain about. For now, the M3 lineup has more going for it than just a new chip.
Apple continues to lead the way on laptop displays, with their Liquid Retina XDR display peaking at up to
sixteen hundred nits in HDR, and six hundred nits in SDR, all while running at
120 hertz. That is astonishing for a machine that runs on battery. And speaking of, they couldn't
resist taking some shots at Intel over their crummy battery life, boasting that an M3 machine
will give Intel Mac owners up to an additional 11 hours of battery life alongside the up to 11x
performance uplift. An uplift that is consistent whether you're plugged into the wall or running
on the aforementioned battery. That's really cool because now if you feel the need to step outside
for some fresh air or just to change the scenery, you don't have to worry about a worse digital
experience because of it. Just unplug, pop your M3 MacBook into an LTT backpack, which has lots
of space for even the 16-inch in there, and an air tag in the hidden pocket, and walk away.
LTTstore.com. But hey, maybe you like having a stationary computer. Where's the love for you?
Well, the good news is the new iMovie.
iMac, which comes with a 4.5K display now, is getting the regular M3 chip. The bad news is
that's all the love you get. Apple, where the heck are the Pro and Max models, guys?
Oh wait, I get it. They probably could have done that, but launching three dyes across three
chassis, that seems like it was the right number today. But more will almost certainly follow if
Apple's to keep hold of their efficiency crown. The just-announced Snapdragon X,
Elite looks poised to make the competition a lot more interesting, and Microsoft's decade-plus
long slog to make Windows on ARM a reality feels like it's finally on the cusp of bearing fruit.
Of course, most of the comparisons I saw Qualcomm making were to M2, and you can't actually buy any
of that stuff today. So if you're looking for something to compete with a MacBook,
you'll have to check the links below where we'll have, um, MacBooks.
Don't expect them to be cheap. The 14-inch M3 MacBook is $400 less than the old 14-inch MacBook,
so that's cool, but it's also $300 more expensive than the previous entry-level model
now that the 13 option doesn't exist anymore, and you'll be paying that price for just 8GB
of unified memory and a wimpy 512GB SSD. Once you start specking out the 16-inch versions with the
M3 Pro and the M3 Max, well, it doesn't take long to start hitting $3, $4, or even $7,000,
and that's nothing compared to what they've done with the iMac. Sure, it starts at $1,300,
but that is with a 256GB SSD. By the time you put a terabyte of storage in it, you've spent
$1,700 on a machine that just has the most basic M3 silicon in it. Man, do these guys ever charge
a premium for that sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,
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Thanks for watching. If you guys like this video, make sure to check out our iPhone 15
coverage from earlier this year. That A15 Pro chip is something else.