First Benchmark Results Surface for M3 Chip in New Macs

[name99]

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.

If this is so important to you, get iStat Menus and you can look at it whenever you want.
Apple removed NOTHING from the *OS*, they removed something from one particular app, probably because the public could not be trusted to interpret the information correctly.

(Do Page Ins and Page Outs refer to faults [ie including compression events, or Copy on Write events] or only to storage events? Do you know?
Does one "Page In" refer to a single such event, or to the amount of data pulled in by such an event, which could be very different if the "page" pulled in was compressed, or if the system chosen to also pre-fault multiple adjacent pages.
Do you know?)
Like I said, public cannot be trusted to to interpret the information correctly...

 

[Abazigal]

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 ?

All I am hearing is - People complain when the M2 didn't seem like a significant improvement over the M1, and are now complaining when the M3 appears to be a noticeable improvement over the M2.

In short, people just like to complain.

 

[SnoFlo]

Ye but your laptop with that chip in it is gimped by its enclosure lol.

I have a 8x8 16gb 1tb M1 MacBook Air and what you're saying is incorrect. It's not as fast and from a gpu perspective is about 60% slower. I also hit that max ram limit within minutes and it slows down no tomorrow. Also sustained exports are unbelievable slow, long video exports and over 100 images from Lightroom the iMac is almost twice as fast. For shorts bursts like a 5 min vid or up to 50 image exports the MacBook air is great but it aint no work horse for a day to day pro.

But bottom line like I said its the cost of upgrade, a Mac Studio would be perfect but to buy the right spec and a 5k display would be 5k which again is another 2k more than what I paid for the iMac.

But this was the whole point of my post. Ram and monitor support is the bottle neck for me 16gb is not a lot even with it being unified and the chip is also gimped by ram amounts. Especially when you are paying £200 for an extra 8 or £400 for 24gb its literally a joke. Essentially I would have to spend another 2k to get multi monitor support and up to 64gb of ram but with a fan the m3 is more than enough CPU and gpu its not far off either.


But im assuming you didn't read my post..

Your post did not mention you owning an M1 MacBook Air. You should update your signature. I said the Air GPU is slower.

My M1 Air exports 1000 Phase One IQ180 files in 7 min 57 sec (Capture One Pro). HP ZBook (12950HX, RTX A5500) in 2 min 44 sec. No, the chip in the HP is not 'gimped'. Your iMac must be really fast. Good idea to keep it.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

I suppose the question then is why did they update the Mac Studio in June if these new chips were just around the corner. Unless there was uncertainty and releasing these MBPs now was a last minute decision?

Assuming there can only be one answer for the decisions made by this multi-national business worth multi-hundreds-of-billions is foolish IMHO.

Picture this: it's June 2023 and Apple rolls out the new Mac Pro but having decided they wouldn't update the Studios until the M3-family chips are available, they don't even mention the Studio during the WWDC keynote. They therefore leave it with the M1 chips, which were getting long in the tooth during a global chip shortage, and people assume that Apple is killing off the Studio so sales drop. One of Apple's flagship machines is left looking like a failure. All because Apple decided to wait until... when?

There is still no M3 Ultra chip (that we know of), so that means no M3 Mac Studio. Apple would STILL be selling the Studio with M1 chips if they hadn't updated in June. I don't think Apple is going to want to release a M3 Max Studio now, and an M3 Ultra Studio next year. They will be announced in tandem, as they have in the past.

Studios are always updated & released after portables, which are a larger market segment. The M2 chips were announced in June 2022, in portables. Studios with the Max and Ultra were announced a year later.

 

[Motorola68000]

All I am hearing is - People complain when the M2 didn't seem like a significant improvement over the M1, and are now complaining when the M3 appears to be a noticeable improvement over the M2.

In short, people just like to complain.

So should Apple not bother to come up with better products? Of course there will be a crossover, as it is with virtually every product. The alternative is being a luddite.

 

[chucker23n1]

Um.... memory usage...

Not a helpful figure.

Memory usage will always climb to fill your RAM. By adding more cached files, for example.

 

[Abazigal]

So should Apple not bother to come up with better products? Of course there will be a crossover, as it is with virtually every product. The alternative is being a luddite.

Apple products are constantly getting better. A lot of the criticism just feels like a game of constant goal post shifting to me. Apple will get ragged on for something they are not doing (even if the merits aren’t exactly proven), and they do get round to it, the critics will just move on to something else to find fault with. You rarely ever see credit being given when credit is due.

 

[Nehalem]

Is it just me who is confused at how to pick which M3 to buy?

How am I supposed to know how many of what cores I need?

 

[Jacoblee23]

Is it just me who is confused at how to pick which M3 to buy?

How am I supposed to know how many of what cores I need?

Same. We still haven't found out what the benchmarks are on the m3 pro. That will be helpful.

 

[tomscott1988]

Your post did not mention you owning an M1 MacBook Air. You should update your signature. I said the Air GPU is slower.

My M1 Air exports 1000 Phase One IQ180 files in 7 min 57 sec (Capture One Pro). HP ZBook (12950HX, RTX A5500) in 2 min 44 sec. No, the chip in the HP is not 'gimped'. Your iMac must be really fast. Good idea to keep it.

Its in my sig...

So how is you MacBook Air embarrassing your HP lol your just arguing for the sake of it. You have just contradicted your own post and literally backed up my point that extended workflows the air isnt quick. Again read the post.

 

[falkon-engine]

All I am hearing is - People complain when the M2 didn't seem like a significant improvement over the M1, and are now complaining when the M3 appears to be a noticeable improvement over the M2.

In short, people just like to complain.

It’s the timing not the jump in performance. I mean it doesn’t affect me personally I have M1 Max and am patiently waiting until thunderbolt 5 arrives. But put yourself in the shoes of another human for a second. You mean to tell me if you just bought a M2 Ultra Mac Pro or Mac Studio 1-2 months ago, and here comes the MacBook Pro with a chip that is slightly faster on some tasks while costing much less, you wouldn’t feel some kind of way about it?

 

[chucker23n1]

You mean to tell me if you just bought a M2 Ultra Mac Pro or Mac Studio 1-2 months ago, and here comes the MacBook Pro with a chip that is slightly faster on some tasks while costing much less, you wouldn’t feel some kind of way about it?

I would feel excited about the Mac Studio I'm getting four years down the road.

Sure, that's an unusually short amount of time. But new stuff is always coming. That's good. What would the alternative be? For Apple to delay the release of the M3 Max just so Mac Studio owners are less upset?

 

[Jacoblee23]

Any idea what the delay is on the pro m3 benchmarks? Trying to decide if I am going with the m3, or pro m3 with my very light usage.

 

[chucker23n1]

Any idea what the delay is on the pro m3 benchmarks? Trying to decide if I am going with the m3, or pro m3 with my very light usage.

Odds are the benchmarks are coming from the embargoed reviewers, who probably got the M3 (maybe as an iMac) and M3 Max, but not the M3 Pro.

 

[dan428]

That's because there is little to rave about for this update.
Apple themselves during the keynote advertised it as an upgrade for mostly Intel users and maybe some M1s, they dodged most comparisons against the M2 line.

20% over the chips that were just recently released dude, that’s a huge boost. I don’t know why so many comments here are this clueless

 

[tomscott1988]

Any idea what the delay is on the pro m3 benchmarks? Trying to decide if I am going with the m3, or pro m3 with my very light usage.

Very light usage.

Put it in perspective the m3 is basically the same performance as the m2 pro.

The m1 was faster than the fastest 2020 10 core i9 iMac in a passively cooled shell. The M3 is essentially benching 50% higher than that. Its new GPU is also benching pretty well too its a win win everywhere.

The only reason to be considering any more than the M3 is if you need large amounts of ram or more than 1 external display.

Save yourself like £1000 and get an air, it's funny now that these chips are so good but people are still working themselves up the line and paying for more for performance.

Il give you an example, im a creative pro - videographer, photographer and graphic designer. My i9 2020 iMac is still a great tool and is about the same speed as the m1 MacBook Air but with extended loads it is quicker and the Gpu is about 3x the speed. I also have an M1 and the two problems I have with that is ram availability and displays the cpu is great. I have 64gb in the iMac and max I quite often. I can do a days work on the m1 MacBook Air with 16gbwhich is insanity. Just one year before the intel MacBook Air would struggle to web browse now it can do my full workflow. The speed in which things have moved is bonkers.

Before I would be spending 5k on a machine and now I can get away with a 1k machine, yes I wouldn't want to do it full time but it's mad you can. If your a light user its a bonkers amount of ability you have in any of the M chips.

The years previously the Mac was so unloved I found it really hard to find a machine that didnt struggle even the iMac Pro was slow because the xeon didnt haver any codec acceleration.

Things are so good now there should be no complaining what so ever.
It's not ideal but I can make a full living on a MacBook Air, in the grand scheme it's insane what you can do these days.

Don't let Tim Cook tell you the M1 isnt good because you can pick up M1 MacBook Airs on eBay for like £500.

 

[RiemannSpace]

M3 Pro Result:

CPU ST: 3035
CPU MT: 15173

vs M2 Pro

CPU ST: 2644
CPU MT: 14229

Mac15,6 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Mac15,6 with an Apple M3 Pro processor.

browser.geekbench.com