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Apple M3 Pro Chip Has 25% Less Memory Bandwidth Than M1/M2 Pro
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This memory bandwidth thing is being blown out of proportion. First off, all M3 Pro and Max SOCs still have 400GB/s GPU memory bandwidth. They have a new and much improved cacheing implementation. CPU memory bandwidth is now 150GB/s on the M3 Pro, vs. 200GB/s on the M1/M2 Pro, which honestly was not fully utilized on the M1/M2 under all but the most extreme situations. The M3 Max now has 300GB/s on the 14-core and 400GB/s on the 16-core.
You guys can freak out about this all you want, but I'm betting real-world performance on these is going to show every bit of the performance gains over M1 that Apple is touting and still a nice bump up from M2. It's an incremental upgrade... The real improvement here vs. M2 is the GPU and the platform shift to 3nm. I wouldn't upgrade to M3 if I already had an M2, unless I was developing or using mostly GPU-centric apps and cash flow/ budgeting justifies it. M2 should still have good resale value for a bit.
You guys can freak out about this all you want, but I'm betting real-world performance on these is going to show every bit of the performance gains over M1 that Apple is touting and still a nice bump up from M2. It's an incremental upgrade... The real improvement here vs. M2 is the GPU and the platform shift to 3nm. I wouldn't upgrade to M3 if I already had an M2, unless I was developing or using mostly GPU-centric apps and cash flow/ budgeting justifies it. M2 should still have good resale value for a bit.
Luckily I don’t buy my work devices - they supply me with a Lenovo ThinkPad (3-year cycle) and iPhone (2-year cycle). So far went through one PC and it suffered in its last 6 months. I plan ahead my requirements in the Mac I purchase.
In Mac, what I buy on day 1 will work perfectly on year 5. That’s the difference between Mac and PC.
I prefer the longevity of the Mac which is unprecedented. I am on my third Mac in 13 years and can keep it going to 16 years. And throughout the devices lifetime I never faced a single issue. As opposed to almost monthly struggles with my work Lenovo
My workplace supplies my laptop so don’t much of a say. It’s a good specced machine but of course has MDM. My m1 Mac mini works perfectly and I really don’t want to buy a PC for personal use as I prefer the Mac UI/UX and longevity
I'm surprised Timmay didn't remove 1 speaker also, and maybe half the keyboard lighting.
Great! How can you possibly get by with it? The way people act about SSD speeds would indicate you can’t use your computer.
I obviously know how you can use it as up until a few months ago I was still using a 2010 Mac Pro which is even SATA 2 speeds for the SSD.
Bingo. I have a 16" M1 Max with 64gb of ram. I've yet to want more speed. Battery life is great, performance is great. At this rate, maybe the m5 will get me to upgrade, but really it'll likely need to be something like adding a cell modem to the mbp.
Right now I spent $10,000+ and I’m keeping the intel for many years… it’s handling my Logic Pro projects with no problems… so looking to get my money’s worth…. And I have a daughter who just started college
may hold onto it for M4!M5! Beware. It may decide to destroy your entire fleet of starships. Keep your phasers locked down.
I can’t speak for laptops, but build yourself a Windows gaming PC and it’ll last far longer than five years and you’ll get *far* better gaming performance for the money than a Mac.
Unfortunately that is exactly what Apple is doing and they are following the same path that other big companies have done in the past that are no longer with us.
I am still convinced that Meteor lake is gonna make Apple look foolish for switching away. A lot of the power advantage came from the smaller node Apple was using vs the old 14nm intel chips apple was using. Much of that is solved with meteor lake which is the first chip built on Intel 4. Intel is expected to have a node advantage over the competition in a few years as well with the release of the 20A and 18A nodes. The loss of dedicated GPU support is still a huge loss, especially for products like the Mac Pro which substantially behind even NVIDIA's consumer mid range cards, and orders of magnitude slower than their high end cards.
I, too, have read this elsewhere about the distinction between version three and four. However, that does not appear to be the case on the spec sheet see photo.
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With their new CEO, I do have hope for Intel getting back in the game and being at the top of the game.
Yep, I reached that point with the iPhone Pro. AUD$2000 for a phone exceeded my tipping point. Waiting for the Black Friday sales to pick up a Pixel 8.
As for the Mac, as a heavy daily MBP user for work/study/play, I splurged on the MBP with all the features I needed, reasonably future proofed, and won't need an upgrade for the next several thousand years. 16" M1 Pro MBP. Brilliant machine. Overkill in many ways.
The only single thing I would get even the slightest benefit from M3 over M2 is the Space Black. And the only single thing I would gain benefit from M2 over M1 is battery life.
Bad luck Scrooge McCook, better luck next time.
For the M2 mini, it doesn't have an internal screen, thus Apple was able to route both DP stream into 2 of those ports at the same time, fulfilling the TB4 requirement.
On the M1 mini, for some hardware reasons Apple couldn't do that yet, the mini still could support 2 displays at the same time but one of them must be through the HDMI. Therefore on the M1 mini it had to be called TB3 still.
Then on all M1/M2/M3 Macs that have an internal screen, one of the display buffers is already taken by it, sparing only one more for the ports. So all of the ports on them cannot be called TB4.
Because not everyone is on the same upgrade cycle. Some upgrade annually, others every five years, some ten years and everything in between. Not everyone is consistent either. For instance I got a 2012 MBP and didn’t get another one until 2019. But I got a 2021 and now a 2023 MBP. For every person who buys one each year there are probably 50 people who don’t. There are also new buyers, perhaps a young person buying his first computer or someone switching from Windows. Apple needs to stay competitive and have up-to-date products for that time when someone does want to upgrade. A person looking for a new computer is going to want something that’s latest and greatest rather than something three years old when every other computer maker is updating their models annually.
Of course in the case of the low selling iMac, it was three years.
One of the most annoying things is that they compare new products to those that are ancient. iPhone 15 Pro is faster than iPhone 2007.
Well, you, the consumer, should probably upgrade every three years or more. (The average for laptops is more like four to five years, but with pros, it's lower.)
But the vendor should offer something new more frequently, because not everyone is on the same cycle. Apple has a new microarchitecture and new process node ready now (both of which they primarily developed for the iPhone anyway); why wait.
Um, the 2020 iMac 27" is not even four years old yet. And can still be found in the refurb store.
So yes, Apple did make an item (27" Intel iMac) in their refurb store look obsolete, with those M3 graphics and spiel.
My understanding from several manufacturers is that T’bolt 5 won’t be widely available until late 2024 or 2025. Hardware controllers take time to be designed and implementing drivers etc will take time. It’s not guaranteed M4 chips will even be able to accommodate the controllers etc 😕