I don't understand the -50GB/s memory bandwidth deficit for the M3 Pro lineup. It's now 150GB/s vs M1's 200GB/s
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Event Live Blog: MacBook Pro and iMac Updated With New M3 Chip Family
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
M1 owners still waiting for M6, yawning
They were selling the stupid trashcans in Europe for a time last year, which were obsolete. Just because Apple sells it does not mean they will support it. This is especially true of first run products on new architectures.
It better be, it's the latest version. I can't wait to see real world test though.
I really liked the price cut on the base 14" MBP from $1,999 to $1,599. Me personally the only reason that I would have ever to switch my M1 Macbook Air was if I had the disposable income to grab a MBP only because I love ProMotion displays. With that said, I think the base M3 14" will eat a lot of sales of the M2 MBA specially the 15".
M2 15" starts at $1,299 for the 8GPU/10CPU cores, 8GB RAM and 256 SSD storage, while the $1,599 MBP gives you a 8GPU/10CPU M3 chip (with AV1 encoding...and ray-tracing support...if that means anything to you on a MBA), a Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion, Wi-Fi6E. the same 8 GB of RAM as the M2 MBA but with double the storage (512 GB) and a better battery life (18 vs 22 hours of video playback).
At least for me, $299 when you are already paying $1299 doesn't look that much of a difference when the only think you are giving up is an inch of screen real estate and a the passsive cooling of the MBA.
I think Apple took a sensible approach with the M3 14" MBP esentially realasing a MBP "Lite" with all the features except for the raw horsepower of the Pro and Max chips.
M2 15" starts at $1,299 for the 8GPU/10CPU cores, 8GB RAM and 256 SSD storage, while the $1,599 MBP gives you a 8GPU/10CPU M3 chip (with AV1 encoding...and ray-tracing support...if that means anything to you on a MBA), a Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion, Wi-Fi6E. the same 8 GB of RAM as the M2 MBA but with double the storage (512 GB) and a better battery life (18 vs 22 hours of video playback).
At least for me, $299 when you are already paying $1299 doesn't look that much of a difference when the only think you are giving up is an inch of screen real estate and a the passsive cooling of the MBA.
I think Apple took a sensible approach with the M3 14" MBP esentially realasing a MBP "Lite" with all the features except for the raw horsepower of the Pro and Max chips.
I was intrigued by the MacBook Pro price drop until I saw they lopped off 8GB of RAM in exchange.
This Halloween event was meant to destroy the villainous 13" Touch Bar MBP and replace it with $1500 pro machine. People like me who b!tch on MacRumors may yawn, but I'll sleep tight knowing a new student will never have to use a butterfly keyboard again.
*Not replacing peripherals is unforgivable, however.
*Not replacing peripherals is unforgivable, however.
So you think come next year the Intel Mac Pro which would have still been on sale by Apple 16 months previous, and cost a minimum of 7K, won’t get a supported OS update. OK….
The M3 is more than fine in most respects and the video upgrades are really significant. However (isn't it always something?), the Pro only got a piddling 4GB of extra memory capacity (maybe to run virtual MS Windows with 32GB on the side?). That means the new Mac mini (whenever it appears) will likely be limited to 36GB of memory and that's just too little for my work.
I do image processing tasks with thousands of multi-mega-pixel images (concurrently) and I need a MINIMUM of 64GB of memory (like I have in my 6-year-old PC). I was hoping that the next Mac mini would support that kind of memory capacity but I guess Apple wants everyone to upgrade to the Mac Studio or to be stuck in an endless upgrade cycle driven strictly by the need for more memory.
As I said a few weeks ago, memory capacity is the true Achilles' heel of Apple silicon.
That said, a Mac Studio with the M3 Max would be a really great system and maybe I should just go for even more memory (96GB or -- gulp -- 128GB?).
And yes, the "scary fast" event was short and sweet which kind of makes me think that even Apple wasn't that impressed with these new computers. I think this may have been the one time where they undersold their wares, since the M3 is actually pretty nice.
I do image processing tasks with thousands of multi-mega-pixel images (concurrently) and I need a MINIMUM of 64GB of memory (like I have in my 6-year-old PC). I was hoping that the next Mac mini would support that kind of memory capacity but I guess Apple wants everyone to upgrade to the Mac Studio or to be stuck in an endless upgrade cycle driven strictly by the need for more memory.
As I said a few weeks ago, memory capacity is the true Achilles' heel of Apple silicon.
That said, a Mac Studio with the M3 Max would be a really great system and maybe I should just go for even more memory (96GB or -- gulp -- 128GB?).
And yes, the "scary fast" event was short and sweet which kind of makes me think that even Apple wasn't that impressed with these new computers. I think this may have been the one time where they undersold their wares, since the M3 is actually pretty nice.
They’ve pulled that stunt before. 4th gen iPod Touch was for sale in May and iOS 7 came out in September, which didn’t support it.
I doubt they really need latest macos. Only devs are forced to use the latest one.
I am still holding out also, though I feel the Death Star tractor beam on my ass...
<<holds down option key and boots into Windows for non-iPhone quality gaming>>
Yes, I thought the same thing! I really loved that G3 PowerBook, but nowadays, I'm not particularly keen on black laptops.
As more details come out it's looking fairly clear that Apple have nerfed the M3 Pro MBP to encourage upgrades to the M3 Max versions. Lower memory bandwidth than M2 Pro, fewer P cores and fewer GPU cores... It would not surprise me if the base M3 Pro is only 5-10% faster than the M2 Pro in general tasks that don't require new hardware features (e.g. ray-tracing or AV1 decode).
M2 Pro was 6 or 8 p-cores with 4 e-cores and 16 or 19 GPU cores with 200 GB/s memory bandwidth. M3 pro is 5 or 6 p-cores with 6 e-cores and 14 or 18 GPU cores with 150 GB/s memory bandwidth.
M2 Pro was 6 or 8 p-cores with 4 e-cores and 16 or 19 GPU cores with 200 GB/s memory bandwidth. M3 pro is 5 or 6 p-cores with 6 e-cores and 14 or 18 GPU cores with 150 GB/s memory bandwidth.
I had a 24” iMac for about 9-10 years and finally upgraded in late 2019 for a 27”
iMac. This one is just 4 years old. Seems quite young for the massive PUSH to convert all Intel owners to M-Macs.
I’ll just update memory and maybe if I can a larger SSD hardwire and hope it gives me another 4-5 years.
My iMac is doing fine. Stupid small SSD but otherwise it is fine (until my son fills the SSD with his games and wonders why it feels sluggish)
iMac. This one is just 4 years old. Seems quite young for the massive PUSH to convert all Intel owners to M-Macs.
I’ll just update memory and maybe if I can a larger SSD hardwire and hope it gives me another 4-5 years.
My iMac is doing fine. Stupid small SSD but otherwise it is fine (until my son fills the SSD with his games and wonders why it feels sluggish)
A consequence of the hardware and software being made by the same people... There is an incentive to discontinue products software support to push people to buy new products. C.f. to M$ who will happily sell a copy of Windows 10 to someone with a Pentium III. No my theory does not account for Windows 11's TPM requirement.
That’s where many people fall in the upsell trap. 299/1299 means you pay 25% more. Next, it’s not much of a 200 difference to upgrade RAM, and not much of a difference 200 to upgrade storage. A reasonable amount of RAM/storage by today’s standards is at least 16GB/1TB.
I’m still using my 2014 retina 27” on a daily basis on Sonoma via OCLP