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Comparing the plain M3 MacBook Pro to the M2 Pro MacBook Pro, it looks like the plain M3 chip is faster than the M2 Pro in single-core (around 3000 vs around 2700), but slower than the M2 Pro in multi-core (around 11,700 vs around 12,500).

If the base 14" MacBook Pro M3 with 8/512 is $1,599, and an Apple certified refurb 14" MacBook Pro M2 Pro with 16/512 is $1,599 too, is the latter still the better buy?

1x extra TB4 port, capability to drive 2 external monitors, extra RAM will give the edge in most workflows.
No brainer to me.
 
I wish the benchmarks were in real-world units, like how many Logic Pro virtual tracks can it play before hiccup, or how fast can it copy a TB hard drive, etc. I’ve looked for this answer for years, but still don’t know if I need 16GB of RAM or a Pro chip to run my studio, or if M2 is enough. Everyone will say “just pay for the RAM to be sure” etc, but rather spend difference on a better interface or microphone, you know? I don’t make huge productions, but I’ve still hit processor overload on my i5 iMac with 24 GB.
M3 regular seems to be no pair with m1/m2 pro so i think with 16 gb of ram or 24 its gonna be preety fast for you. old i5 in an imac is not comperable. I'm going to waint wor the m3 airs to appear.
 
It's still a SUPER capable laptop, so why focus on it being "obsolete".
I didn't.

Faster computers? I'm just guessing here.
But not THE fastest, or even in the top 10-20%. Apple managed that in the Intel days, and arguably in the PowerPC days.
Why would they have a "destination"?
Fun to think that they don't!

Tim Cook: Ah, it's just random. Let's see where it takes us!
 
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I am caught between having a lot to rave about and having a lot to be embarrassed about.

The M3 chip (assuming this is the basic chip) is 211% faster than my 2013 15 inch Intel MBP (which I am typing on right now).

Dang.... It is well passed time for me to get a new MBP.
You will see an amazing boost. I'm jealous of the leap you will experience.
 
To me, it would make more sense to put the the plain Jane M3 in the MacBook Air, and have the MacBook Pros have only the Pro and Max versions. That would help differentiate the two lines of laptops.

Also wish the iMac got the Pro and Max. Maybe bring back the iMac Pro at 27" or 32", and do the same thing as the MacBooks: plain Jane in the "regular" iMac and Pro and Max in the iMac Pro.

This is just me daydreaming, and know it'll never happen, but I'd love to see what Apple would do with a blade server setup. From the various graphics Apple has shown of the motherboards of its AS Macs, the motherboard's pretty small. Optimize it for a blade server setup, and you could probably fit a boatload of them in a regular 42U rack.
They are already differentiated. 120hz better screens. Active cooling. And you can configure the Pro models with a better cpu/gpu, more storage, more ram, and more ports. Source: https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/?modelList=MacBook-Air-M2-15,MacBook-Pro-14-M2,MacBook-Pro-14-M3x
 
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Perhaps not the place for rumour, but I suspect many businesses like mine did not upgrade at all to the M2, and I suspect adverse publicity, sometimes rather OTT may have contributed to an M2 inventory surplus that Apple has.

It would never surprise me now to see a low cost M2 MacBook to use up what I suspect is an M2 chip surplus.

Whilst not always a good idea to go backwards, a cheap reliable MacBook would I'm sure be appreciated by students and educational establishments. Obviously it won't serve the high end user, as even the current M3 line up probably doesn't as technological and performance needs grow, but it could be a good way of removing any M2 surpluses.
 
This is tricky to generalize, but if you already have a Mac, and are doing that workload, the best way to find out is to watch the memory pressure chart in Activity Monitor. Launch Activity Monitor, switch to the Memory tab, and perform your workload.

If it's all green, you have enough RAM.

View attachment 2305550

If it goes yellow, well, that's a warning sign.

View attachment 2305551

And if it goes red, you definitely got too little RAM for what you're trying to do, and your Mac will go slow as a result.

View attachment 2305552

Just tax your Mac a little and see if you reach yellow.
This is excellent advise, and why I want at least 24GB on my next Mac.
 
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A Benchmark in and of itself is meaningless.
True. However experience shows Geekbench is a good general gross performance estimate. Especially IMO to see how the big differences among base/pro max levels may be more relevant than M1/M2/M3 levels. Then specific onboard RAM of course has huge impact to most real work.
 
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20% speed boost is extremely high. I wonder how well Geekbench translates to daily experience because wow. The new iMac beats all the M2 macs, even the ones that are super expensive and top of the line
These numbers are great but we're going to need to see the hard-hitting apps doing their thing for this to mean anything.

Especially the numbers for this range versus a m1 Max. M3 line should be compared almost exclusively against the M3 Max because that's the best of what you can pull out of that generation. It's a great way to gauge where you're at and how far you can go with the M3 Max later on. I think.
 
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So let me get this straight, a laptop with m3 max will be faster than a mac studio with m2 max? Seems like anyone who bought a mac studio m2 max in the past 1-2 months got taken for a ride.

Edit: for those disagreeing, rumors are now saying M3 Max outperforms M2 ultra (in Geekbench 6 at least). If so, this makes it even more egregious! Mac Pro released a mere 4.5 months ago is already being bested by a laptop ?
yeah, at this point, Apple silicon releases have this "problem" with M1 and M2 the same, the Mac Stuido M1 came up and few months later the M2 Pro/Max laptops were released, so same problem.

I guess laptops are a top selling and flagship models for Apple, for pro and consumers at once, but Mac Studio are for pure pro users with some extra studio features as more ports, better ventilation and so on. It would be harder to release all systems at once, and marketing team wont like it either

So yes, if you buy the Mac Studio Max, your SOC will be at half life span...

I chose the MS Max over the MBP Max hoping throttling will be noticeable in long term as I Neat video and Topaz renders takes evena whole day, so it would be too much for the laptop. But I cant find "real-render" comparation test beyond the classic and pointless 3 minutes render in Final Cut...
 
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In 2020 20th Nov Intel got scary too fast, I guess now they are quite relaxing after M3, although... will see M3 Ultra ;)
 
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yeah, at this point, Apple silicon releases have this "problem" with M1 and M2 the same, the Mac Stuido M1 came up and few months later the M2 Pro/Max laptops were released, so same problem.

I guess laptops are a top selling and flagship models for Apple, for pro and consumers at once, but Mac Studio are for pure pro users with some extra studio features as more ports, better ventilation and so on. It would be harder to release all systems at once, and marketing team wont like it either

So yes, if you buy the Mac Studio Max, your SOC will be at half life span...

I chose the MS Max over the MBP Max hoping throttling will be noticeable in long term as I Neat video and Topaz renders takes evena whole day, so it would be too much for the laptop. But I cant find "real-render" comparation test beyond the classic and pointless 3 minutes render in Final Cut...
I have M1 Max and I am just glad to see Apple push the envelope. I won’t upgrade this year I’m patiently waiting on Apple to introduce thunderbolt 5.
 
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I know a lot of people are dismayed by the pricing of the MacBook Pros, especially the Max models, but please be aware that Windows mobile workstations can be far more expensive. Those are what I used before I switched to Apple. My last HP ZBook cost $6998, and that was not even the highest specification. Dell Precision mobile workstations are not far behind.
 
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To me, it would make more sense to put the the plain Jane M3 in the MacBook Air, and have the MacBook Pros have only the Pro and Max versions. That would help differentiate the two lines of laptops.

Also wish the iMac got the Pro and Max. Maybe bring back the iMac Pro at 27" or 32", and do the same thing as the MacBooks: plain Jane in the "regular" iMac and Pro and Max in the iMac Pro.

This is just me daydreaming, and know it'll never happen, but I'd love to see what Apple would do with a blade server setup. From the various graphics Apple has shown of the motherboards of its AS Macs, the motherboard's pretty small. Optimize it for a blade server setup, and you could probably fit a boatload of them in a regular 42U rack.
Putting the base M3 in the 14" MBP body with Pro features, is about giving options to those who don't need the extra Pro/Max GPU power, but are willing to pay for the other stuff. Makes absolute sense.
 
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This is tricky to generalize, but if you already have a Mac, and are doing that workload, the best way to find out is to watch the memory pressure chart in Activity Monitor. Launch Activity Monitor, switch to the Memory tab, and perform your workload.

If it's all green, you have enough RAM.

View attachment 2305550

If it goes yellow, well, that's a warning sign.

View attachment 2305551

And if it goes red, you definitely got too little RAM for what you're trying to do, and your Mac will go slow as a result.

View attachment 2305552

Just tax your Mac a little and see if you reach yellow.
Yeah sure, but what does that even mean? Is it just a con to get you to buy more RAM? Why can't we have the actual figures, rather than a vague pretty color chart?
 
Yeah sure, but what does that even mean? Is it just a con to get you to buy more RAM? Why can't we have the actual figures, rather than a vague pretty color chart?
You can get lots of RAM usage metrics for every process via Activity Monitor, or OS command line tools such as “top”, “vm_stat” and others. You will need to understand what the numbers mean and how macOS allocates memory, but the info is there.

The simplest thing is to look at the amount/throughput of data written & read from page files (page ins and page outs) to understand how much “memory shuffling” is taking place between RAM and storage. The bandwidth of this traffic is the important thing, not so much the total swap space used.

If you are consistently reading/writing, say 50% of your RAM within ”a few minutes”, or a significant percentage of your SSD’s bandwidth, then you are likely affecting performance, and also possibly accelerating wear on your SSD.

macOS used to show “page ins” and “page outs” in MB/s in the activity monitor, but it seems to have gone. You can find this info with “vm_stat”.
 
Apple surely stress tests Logic Pro with real world conditions. They should announce the results. The M3 can play this many instruments while recording this many tracks, the M3 Pro can do this many, etc.
 
You can get lots of RAM usage metrics for every process via Activity Monitor, or OS command line tools such as “top”, “vm_stat” and others. You will need to understand what the numbers mean and how macOS allocates memory, but the info is there.

The simplest thing is to look at the amount/throughput of data written & read from page files (page ins and page outs) to understand how much “memory shuffling” is taking place between RAM and storage. The bandwidth of this traffic is the important thing, not so much the total swap space used.

If you are consistently reading/writing, say 50% of your RAM within ”a few minutes”, or a significant percentage of your SSD’s bandwidth, then you are likely affecting performance, and also possibly accelerating wear on your SSD.

macOS used to show “page ins” and “page outs” in MB/s in the activity monitor, but it seems to have gone. You can find this info with “vm_stat”.
Ah, thanks for that.

"...macOS used to show “page ins” and “page outs” in MB/s in the activity monitor, but it seems to have gone..." Yeah, Apple keeps on REMOVING functionality from macOS these days, it's so damn annoying. Smells of obfuscation, thus the vibe of my previous answer.
 
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Apple surely stress tests Logic Pro with real world conditions. They should announce the results. The M3 can play this many instruments while recording this many tracks, the M3 Pro can do this many, etc.
It is probably hard for them to give an absolute figure because it would depend on individual conditions, such as other applications / running on the users machine, specific combinations of plug-ins / effects etc.

I don't use Logic Pro, but I've seen many YouTube videos for the likes of Max Tech, Tech Chap etc. who have tested the number of Logic Pro tracks supported on different Macs. I have no doubt that they will also be testing the M3 Macs, although I would recommend you find a channel / review that is from someone who specialises in audio editing with Logic Pro, because the mainstream reviews tend to be very generic.

In the short term, look at results for the M2 chips to get a ballpark figure. This is an example I found at the top of a Google search for "Apple M2 Logic Pro performance":
 
20% speed boost is extremely high. I wonder how well Geekbench translates to daily experience because wow. The new iMac beats all the M2 macs, even the ones that are super expensive and top of the line
Honestly only those who do video work and compiling will really reap the benefit of this increase for the majority of the population the speed bump doesnt really do anything. What’s a 20 percent increase in speed for something that is done in seconds anyway which is probably 80 percent of the work done
 
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