There’s a big performance difference between Apple’s M3 Pro and M3 Max

There’s a big performance difference between Apple’s M3 Pro and M3 Max; a significantly bigger difference than between the M2 Pr and the M2 Max.
Apple’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max, the most advanced chips ever built for a personal computer.
The M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max all share the same underlying CPU and GPU architectures and are fabricated using a brand new 3nm process from Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC).
Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica:
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Apple says that the performance cores in any given M3 processor can run up to 30 percent faster than the M1’s performance cores, and that the efficiency cores are up to 50 percent faster.

The performance cores of the M3 family of chips are up to 30 percent faster than those in the M1 family.
The M3 family of chips feature efficiency cores that are up to 50 percent faster than those in the M1 family.
The Neural Engine in M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max is up to 60 percent faster than in the M1 family of chips, making AI and machine learning workflows even faster.

Compared to the M2, the plain-old M3 doesn’t get any additional cores, so it will rely solely on architectural improvements and clock speed bumps to increase performance — and it has 25 billion transistors, 5 billion more than M2, so there’s still quite a bit of new hardware here. It’s still an 8-core CPU, split evenly between performance and efficiency cores, and a 10-core GPU (with a partially disabled 8-core GPU in some entry-level models). Integrated on-package system memory starts at 8GB and maxes out at 24GB, same as the M2.
The M3 Pro is a 37-billion transistor chip, which is 3 billion fewer than the M2 Pro. That makes sense once you look at the core counts; M2 Pro had eight performance cores and four efficiency cores, plus as many as 19 GPU cores. The M3 Pro still has 12 cores, but it’s split evenly between six performance cores and six efficiency cores, and the GPU tops out at 18 GPU cores. Maximum memory capacity does increase slightly, from 32GB to 36GB.
I still expect The M3 Pro to be an upgrade over the M2 Pro because of the updated architectures involved, but it looks like less of an upgrade than the M3 (which keeps core counts the same) or the M3 Max (which increases them). The M2 Pro and M2 Max used the same CPU core configuration, and my best guess is that the company wanted to create more of an incentive to jump from Pro to Max for people who don’t care about GPU performance.
As for the M3 Max, the 92 billion transistor count makes a huge jump from the M2 Max’s 67 billion. A lot of that is accounted for by the CPU M3 Max, which includes 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores, four more performance cores than the M2 Max. The GPU also gets a little bigger, jumping from a max of 38 cores to a max of 40. Maximum memory capacity also goes up from 96GB to 128GB.

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MacDailyNews Take: More differentiation makes selecting the right M3 SoC easier and clearer for customers (and also conveniently boosts top-of-the-line M3 Max configuration sales for Apple). Think of how the company improved differentiation between the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max and how that seems to have pushed demand for the flagship Pro Max higher than in years prior.
The M3 Pro (11-core CPU, 14-core GPU, 18GB Unified Memory) 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999. The M3 Pro (12-core CPU, 18-core GPU, 18GB Unified Memory) 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,399. The M3 Max (14-core CPU, 30-core GPU, 36GB Unified Memory) 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $3,199. And the maxed-out (get it?) M3 Max (16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, 128GB Unified Memory) 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $4,699.
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