Apple’s M3 chips look phenomenal, but there are a couple of ways they might be a downgrade on the M2. What’s going on, and is this actually a problem?
There’s no doubt that the introduction of new M3 chips was the main event at Apple’s Scary Fast show. Yet it looks possible that the M3 Pro might actually have a significant downgrade compared to the Apple silicon chips that came before it.
Apple explained that the M3 Pro chip in the 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pro is up to 40% faster than the M1 Pro in the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Yet as spotted by MacRumors, there are some situations where the latest chips actually look a little worse than their predecessors — at least on paper.
For instance, the M3 Pro comes with 150GBps memory bandwidth, which is 25% less than the 200GBps found in the M1 Pro and M2 Pro.