As the subject line states — does it feel and seem like a substantial upgrade over the 2020 Intel MBP (4 ports)?
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.
Does the M3 Pro MBP feel like a substantial upgrade over a 2020 Intel MBP?
- Thread starter KoolAid-Drink
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'd argue that the 2020 13" M1 MBP was already a substantial upgrade.
As with the post above- every Apple Silicon Mac feels like an upgrade from a 2020 Intel MBP.
It may be recent but this was a major change for the MacBooks moving over to the M series silicon. Night and day difference
For me there is one thing above and beyond that was the game changer. Even if the M1 was a few steps behind the Intel in performance, I'd still favor it because it's so ludicrously good at power management.
You can punish an M-series MBP with your full workflow and it can handle it on battery power. I can edit photos for as much as 7 hours on my M1 Pro. If I tried the same on my 2019 MBP with a Vega 20, I'd be lucky if it got to 90 minutes.
It has made traveling with my laptop so much more convenient as I no longer have to think ahead to manage my power needs. There were times when I didn't dare use my laptop to do real work on the road because I'd risk draining the battery. Now when I travel, I rarely need to pack a full power brick. The tiny charger I use for my iPad is good enough to slowly recharge my battery overnight.
Last edited:
There was no 2020 model year Intel MBP. Any Intel models sold in 2020 would’ve been 2019 model years, when it was last refreshed. There was a 2020 iMac because they didn’t have Mac Studio or the Studio display available yet. All that to say if you bought in 2020 then the chips were already kinda outdated compared with what Intel was coming out with.
Any Apple Silicon Mac will be a huge upgrade over any Intel Mac. I sold my 2019 MBP to get the M3 Max. I wanted to give it time for Apple to iron out hardware and software issues and for companies to port to AS before I upgraded. I was also on an upgrade cycle that wasn’t going to align with AS launch timing.
Any Apple Silicon Mac will be a huge upgrade over any Intel Mac. I sold my 2019 MBP to get the M3 Max. I wanted to give it time for Apple to iron out hardware and software issues and for companies to port to AS before I upgraded. I was also on an upgrade cycle that wasn’t going to align with AS launch timing.
The 16” was a 2019-only model but there were 2020 Intel 13” MacBook Pros with both 2 and 4 Thunderbolt ports as well as a 2020 Intel MacBook Air. The 4-port MBP and the Airs got 10th generation Intel CPUs while the 2-port MBP stayed with the 2019’s 8th generation CPUs. These all got the upgraded scissor keyboard that the 2019 16” had but were otherwise cosmetically identical to earlier models and the 2-port MBP and MBA were externally identical to the M1 Air and MBP.
This stumped me too. I almost said the same thing you did, but stopped myself and dug around on the Apple site where I was surprised to learn about the model @chrfr pointed out. There is actually a 2020 model, but it only exists as a 13" MBP.
From Intel to Silicon is a substantial upgrade, even if you choose M2 Pro. But get minimum 16GB RAM.
Last edited:
Thanks everyone!
As I do mostly web browsing, streaming, document updating, and virtual machines (heaviest use) would you say that it'd be worth it for me to upgrade from the 2020 (Intel) to 2023 MBP?
As I do mostly web browsing, streaming, document updating, and virtual machines (heaviest use) would you say that it'd be worth it for me to upgrade from the 2020 (Intel) to 2023 MBP?
Is your current laptop meeting your need adequately? Then wait. If every bit of speed you get will benefit you, then go for it. If having a battery that lasts all day will make your life easier, definitely do it.
Oh, ok, yeah that’s true. But I don’t even consider the 13” Intel to be anywhere near the same power category as the 16” Intel model to the point where it doesn’t feel like a relevant or even fair comparison. Completely different CPU classes with only four cores and whatever crap Intel integrated GPU. According to Geekbench, that one scores a 4383 multicore. Roughly the same as an iPhone 12, LMAO. If @KoolAid-Drink is coming from the 13”, then any M series is going to feel like a HUGE leap forward and they should upgrade if they are in the market and want the answer to their question about it being a substantial upgrade. Yes, it’s very substantial!
Any M series chip will be an upgrade. Get the ram upgrade. You will be very happy.
Battery life alone did it for me. No jet engine fans are also a nice bonus.
Battery life alone did it for me. No jet engine fans are also a nice bonus.
Stop there! Right now you are running Intel virtual machines. On a 2023 MBP (or any other Apple silicon Mac) you can only run ARM virtual machines. So:
1) You will not be able to transfer your current VMs to a new Mac.
2) You will need to create new VMs.
3) You need to decide if ARM virtual machines will do what you want.
Right now, what VM product, what client virtual machines (OS, RAM, etc.), how many at once, and what do you use them for?
I'm considering upgrading from my 2020 Intel MBP (the last iteration they made) with I5 and 32GB of RAM. Considering I have 32GB of RAM now, will I need to duplicate it to notice a difference in the machines? Or, can I really get away with just 8 or 16 GB? Have things improved enough such that current 8 or 16GB RAM machines operate even better than the Intel 32GB ones?
My use is relatively light. Probably my biggest stressors are having 20+ tabs open with Brave and using the MS Office products - mainly Excel and Word. No photo or video editing currently.
My "needs" for an upgrade are minimal, but my wife needs a new computer and I was going to give her my current one for her very light use.
My use is relatively light. Probably my biggest stressors are having 20+ tabs open with Brave and using the MS Office products - mainly Excel and Word. No photo or video editing currently.
My "needs" for an upgrade are minimal, but my wife needs a new computer and I was going to give her my current one for her very light use.
I would not recommend going all the way down to 8GB RAM. Based on the usage patterns you're describing, you can probably get 16GB and be perfectly fine. Any M-series with 16GB+ of RAM will run circles around that Intel model.
This. 8 GB if you only browse and check email. 16 GB for anyone else.
If you are like me and deal with large files - disk image, remux movie files, large music library , then a 4 TB drive is recommended. I got a 2 TB drive and I'm always having to manage my storage to keep the drive from filling up.
For my usage, I'm pretty sure the MBA would work best, but even there I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around Apple selling a base MBP M3 with only 8GB RAM. I feel like they are implying the current RAM offerings are somewhat equivalent to 2-4X the RAM we used to buy on the Intel machines. But, without consistent trial usage, I can't be completely confident.
Truthfully, my 32GB on my 2020 Intel MBP is likely overkill. I've only noticed issues when there is some program that is hung and it is just a blip with the fans running. Following my activity monitor I'm always in the no pressure green. But, I don't want to drop down to 16GB and find myself bumping into the yellow commonly.
No. If something used 2GB with Intel, it will use 2GB with Apple silicon. What is improved is the speed of a) compressing and decompressing memory, and b) moving memory pages to and from swap - but that only makes a difference if your Mac is swapping a lot (which it might be with 8GB).
The 8GB really is for very basic use and to meet a price point.
You will very likely be fine with 16GB, but get more for peace of mind (and for future use). Some models offer 24GB - like a MBP M3.
And you might want to wait and see if the M3 MBA is released later this month.
If you're unsure how much RAM you're current using, it's simple enough to check. Setup your current machine with your typical workflow. Open Activity Monitor, and switch to the Memory tab.
At the bottom, next to the graph is: Physical Memory, Memory Used, Cached Files, and Swap Used.
MacOS will use any free memory as a disk cache, but keeping that in memory isn't critical. To determine how much memory your apps actually need, calculate "Memory Used" plus "Swap Used" minus "Cached Files" while doing your most demanding activity.
If you see a value other than 0 in Swap Used, it mean you ran out of RAM at some point, and your storage is being used as slow extra RAM. A bit is fine, but if you see significant swap use, you'd benefit from more RAM.
I've currently got about 13GB used, and 3.25GB cache, so I'm needing just under 10GB with just messages, a few Safari tabs, and a terminal window open.
While this generally works, it isn't foolproof. Photoshop will use as much RAM as is available for example, so you might see all your 32GB appearing to be used, while the app might perform nearly identically with just 16GB.
At the bottom, next to the graph is: Physical Memory, Memory Used, Cached Files, and Swap Used.
MacOS will use any free memory as a disk cache, but keeping that in memory isn't critical. To determine how much memory your apps actually need, calculate "Memory Used" plus "Swap Used" minus "Cached Files" while doing your most demanding activity.
If you see a value other than 0 in Swap Used, it mean you ran out of RAM at some point, and your storage is being used as slow extra RAM. A bit is fine, but if you see significant swap use, you'd benefit from more RAM.
I've currently got about 13GB used, and 3.25GB cache, so I'm needing just under 10GB with just messages, a few Safari tabs, and a terminal window open.
While this generally works, it isn't foolproof. Photoshop will use as much RAM as is available for example, so you might see all your 32GB appearing to be used, while the app might perform nearly identically with just 16GB.
I second this. I bought a 2020 13" Intel MBP with 16GB RAM in June of that year and was pretty disappointed that it wasn't significantly better and meager battery improvement over my current 2015 rMBP 13 with 8GB at the time.
When the M1 was released just a few months later I took the hit and traded-in my fairly new MBP for an M1 MBA. The M1 smoked the Intel MBP while running silent, cooler (despite fanless), and 3x the battery life. An M2 or M3-class is an even greater performance delta.
Last edited: