Apple's M3 Max MacBook Pro could be a performance beast

Apple’s M1 and M2 series chips have been received with overwhelming positivity, so much so that most users do not miss Intel chips on Apple’s MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops. With the Apple M-series silicon, the company has brought excellent efficiency alongside impressive performance. Many professional users have even turned to the MacBook Pro for their work needs, as it is sufficiently powerful to handle everything they throw at it. If you’re looking for even more power in a laptop, Apple could have a new M3 Max-powered MacBook Pro waiting to blow your mind.

Reputed Apple leaker Mark Gurman has revealed (via Bloomberg) that Apple has begun testing its most powerful laptop processor, the M3 Max. The upcoming M3 Mac could feature 16 CPU cores (12 high-performance and four efficiency cores) and 40 GPU cores in at least one of its configurations. This configuration in testing also features 48GB of integrated RAM.

In comparison, the current highest-end 16-inch MacBook Pro can have a 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine, with up to 96GB of RAM and up to 8TB SSD storage. This configuration currently costs $6,500, which may seem eye-watering, but it is very much palatable for professional use cases that can take advantage of this power.

To think, the M3 Max-equipped MacBook Pro will be able to push the boundaries of portable computing even further than this. In addition to adding more cores, the M3 chips also include a jump to TSMC’s 3nm production process, compared to the TSMC 5nm production process on the M2 series. This jump is expected to yield better battery life and strong performance gains by itself.

The only caveat with this beastly, spec’d out machine is that it is not expected to launch anytime soon. The M3 Max-powered MacBook Pro is expected to arrive in 2024, possibly in January, which is when Apple usually refreshes the higher end of its chip portfolio.

If you don’t need all of that power, Apple will likely have more affordable M3 chips too. The base M3 chip is expected to have the same configuration as the base M2 chip, with eight CPU cores and up to 10 GPU cores. The M3 Pro is expected to begin with 12 CPU cores and 18 GPU cores, compared to the M2 Pro, which currently starts at 10 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores.

If we can speculate, you can expect to see the first M3 machines in October 2023. We predict these will likely be restricted to the base M3, with the M3 Pro and M3 Max pushed for the early 2024 release. So for October 2023, we bet on seeing the M3-equipped 13-inch MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac.

We speculate that the 15-inch MacBook Air with M3 and other laptops and desktops with M3 Pro and M3 Max (and possibly even the M3 Ultra, if it exists) would come in 2024. We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out.