Something is really wrong with VW 2023 and especially when using an Apple M1 processor.
I've got two computers with VW installed - one iMac 27" (late 2015 32 GB, 4.0 GHz Quad core i7) and one MacBook Pro 13" (2020 16 GB Apple M1) both of them running macOS Monterey 12.6.
When running VW 2022 and earlier versions the Apple M1 computer rendered images twice as fast as the old i7 but after installing VW 2023 the Apple M1 computer take nearly double the time compared to the i7.
Rendering quality is however an improvement in VW 2023 especially when it comes to render grass. VW 2022 (and earlier) took a lot of TLC with Photoshop to fix lawns, etc.
I have attached a chart with rendering time in hr:min:s and four images. The image are rendered with identical settings in bot versions of VW. The longer rendering times in VW 2023 is of course caused by better rendering of the grass - but what happened with the M1?