First Benchmark Results Surface for M3 Chip in New Macs

[falkon-engine]

I mean this is what happened with M1 Max Studio users when the M2 Max Macbook Pro came out. Whats different now?

If my research is correct, the M2 Max mac studio was released on June 13... only to be obsoleted less than 4.5 months later by M3 max. If people who bought the m2 max mac studio had known m3 max was coming so soon, perhaps some would have delayed their purchase, no?

 

[falkon-engine]

To be fair, when a person buys a product that is upgraded within 1-2 months, they haven't been "taken for a ride." Computers are in a constant state of upgrade and replacement. I believe if you have purchased an apple within 45 days of the upgrade, you can return it and get the latest.

If it was 6+ months in market, that's one thing, m2 max mac studio was released on June 13, so less than 4.5 months later, m3 max arrives.

 

[gpat]

If my research is correct, the M2 Max mac studio was released on June 13... only to be obsoleted less than 4.5 months later by M3 max. If people who bought the m2 max mac studio had known m3 max was coming so soon, perhaps some would have delayed their purchase, no?

Still a $1999 purchase against $3199 at the bare minimum for a MBP..

 

[surfzen21]

The 14" MBP with just the M3 is the perfect laptop for me. I don't need the power of the Pro or Max line. But I went for the 14" MBP M1 Pro for the screen.

There is another thread floating around where the thread starter was complaining about the M3 being in a Pro and only having 8GB of Ram. They said it was ridiculous.

My example of why it made sense was specifically you as the consumer. I said there are probably tons of people who want the MiniLED and 120hz but dont need the power of an M3Pro or Max and dont need 16GB of Ram for their daily.

I am one of them too, although, I will probably go with the base M3 Pro.

But that base M3 at $1599 is very tempting.

 

[tYNS]

The real benchmarks are for GPU. If they haven't bumped their GPU scores to at least a 3090 at this stage, they are FAR behind in performance. I still can't believe they call an 8GB machine "PRO". That is like calling a VIC20 a Pro machine when the Commodore Amiga has been out for over 2 years.

 

[Retskrad]

delete

 

[chucker23n1]

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.

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.

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

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.

Just tax your Mac a little and see if you reach yellow.

 

[falkon-engine]

I bought an absolute top spec iMac some years ago on launch day. Within a few months, a new model MacBook Pro was introduced that was faster than my iMac.

Was I disappointed or felt I'd been taken for a ride? Of course not. It's natural progression, new stuff comes out that's faster than old stuff. It's how things work.

It's obvious something faster is always coming. The issue I have is with the timing. Mac Studio m2 max was released on june 13, 2023. So a mere 4.5 months later, here comes m3 max. When people buy an iPhone, typically apple doesn't one-up that model for at least a year. Here, 4.5 months is really short amount of time for a chip to be replaced.

 

[eropko]

…um. Literally any GUI code is single-threaded, for example. As are most data operations, as you first need to partition the data and keep syncing issues in mind.

Making an algorithm multi-threaded is something you have to carefully opt in to.

I don't agree, but also don't want to invest time into discussion. So let's just stay on our ground.

 

[KPOM]

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.

Though the M3 is still 15-20% faster than the M2. The M3 Pro vs M2 Pro will be the interesting comparison. There may not be much difference in the multicore, since they reduced the number of power cores. M3 Max vs M2 Max should be similar to the M3 vs M2.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

M1 MBA is still being sold

Good point. I forgot that one. I guess the presentation soft putting down M1 relative to M3 undermine the attractiveness of that one. Since the M2 version of the same is only $100 more with an extra GPU core too, I presume many will pay the $100 for "latest" Air vs. save the $100 for now (perceived as) for a 2 generations old model. One can readily get the M2 version for LESS than $999 if they want an Air.

I have a M1 Ultra Mac myself and am perfectly happy with M1... so not putting M1 down: just offering an explanation of why Apple keyed on M1 & Intel instead of M3 vs. M2 comparisons: improvements not quite as impressive and, more importantly to Apple, most of the Mac lineup for the holidays is still M2.

 

[bradman83]

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.

One of the biggest value premises of the M series is that the chip can run at full speed without throttling (or minimal throttling) in both a laptop and desktop. So an M2 Max in an MBP and a Studio will perform the same. So yes, a newer generation of the same chip should absolutely outperform the prior generation of chip. Being in a desktop or laptop is irrelevant.

 

[KPOM]

M1 MBA is still being sold

Also the iPad Air. But the M1 MBA is a 3 year old product now. Apple also kept the 2012 MacBook Pro (non-Retina with SuperDrive) around until 2017.

 

[W£S]

Does these benchmarks mean that the YouTubers are testing and we will sell something in the next 24hrs? When does embargo lift?

 

[HowardEv]

Drop an M3 Mac Mini and I’m all over it.

Me too, but if they put it in the same big enclosure I’m out. If it doesn’t have a built-in battery I’m out. If it doesn’t have the best specs and most ports of M3 line I’m out. Please Apple, step up.

 

[tomscott1988]

It's such a shame they gimp the M3 in terms of displays and ram. The M3 is pretty much on paper for CPU performance like an M2 Pro 14" MacBook Pro. So much power and its not just for normal users.

My main machine is a 2020 27" iMac with the 10 core i9 and the basic m3 is like 25% faster than it apart from GPU as I have the 5700XT. But I use a fair amount of ram I have 64gb and hit it quite frequently, nice thing is I can get another 64 for like £150.

I will keep it as it is still very fast it has a 5k display and can power the other 2x27" 4k displays I have attached to it.

Ram is ram ye the new stuff is more efficient but the costs to get to 64gb is ridiculous dropping down isnt really a sensible option. Specing a 14" MacBook Pro to my iMac spec it would be £4k. £1000 more than my iMac with the additional ram and you dont get a 27" 5k display.

To get 64gb you have to get the max chip too and they are too powerful for what I need could get away with the standard M3.

This is the issue with the new Mac line up the CPUs are gimped by the marketing decisions around ram and displays making you spend 2k more than you should.

Ye they are great but man they are expensive.

 

[Return Zero]

The medians are 3018 / 11671. That's up 14.7% / 19.8% from the Mac mini's M2.

Geekbench lists the clock as 4.05 GHz, but I wouldn't fully trust that yet; it sometimes merely guesses what the clock is. But if true, then the clock is up 16.4%, so single-threaded IPC is actually 1.5% worse than before (which is surprising, given that memory bandwidth on the non-Pro hasn't changed), and multi-threaded IPC is only up 2.9%.

Which… for a two-generation jump doesn't seem so great? But again, it's possible that Geekbench is wrong about the clock. Or that these results don't reflect final shipping machines. Or that it is not, in fact, a two-generation jump; that these are actually A16-derived cores (but the GPU raytracing feature would suggest otherwise).

Of course, ignoring clock changes, a 15%/20% improvement in 18 months is pretty good. The clock steadily increasing just worries me because, well, they're not gonna be running the M7 at 6 GHz…

I mean, 1.5% is within margin of error to just be a CPU die shrink pushed faster (same core architecture). The bigger gains here seem to be on the GPU side anyway, just like M2 was over M1. Sure M1 ARMv8.4-A went up to M2 ARMv8.6-A but the only difference was a slight bump in L2 cache, and they pushed higher clocks because they had the thermal headroom on most machines (perhaps not iMac, since we never got the M2 there). The GPU cores are Apple's own new design, unlike the CPU cores, right? So I'm not sure why you say the new GPU features would also suggest new CPU cores, necessarily. Surely with M4 or M5 there will be a new core architecture, especially seeing how Qualcomm and intel both are upping their games lately.

 

[eicca]

Me too, but if they put it in the same big enclosure I’m out. If it doesn’t have a built-in battery I’m out. If it doesn’t have the best specs and most ports of M3 line I’m out. Please Apple, step up.

So you want a headless MacBook Pro that’s the size of an iPhone…?

 

[KPOM]

The real benchmarks are for GPU. If they haven't bumped their GPU scores to at least a 3090 at this stage, they are FAR behind in performance. I still can't believe they call an 8GB machine "PRO". That is like calling a VIC20 a Pro machine when the Commodore Amiga has been out for over 2 years.

Given that Apple’s claims about the CPU (up to 20% faster than M2) were borne out by the GeekBench results, it’s likely the same for the GPU (20% faster than M2). How does that compare with the 3090?

 

[GaryMumford]

Looking good. Maybe time to get an iMac

Only if it had a decent screen size!!

 

[bviktor]

I would've gotten myself a Mac long ago, if the keyboard layout and keyboard shortcuts weren't so friggin inefficient and annoying.

 

[Bodhitree]

”whether it’s a laptop or a desktop is irrelevant.”

Not entirely irrelevant, a MacBook Pro has a very different set of ports from a Mac Studio.

 

[Jack Burton]

There is another thread floating around where the thread starter was complaining about the M3 being in a Pro and only having 8GB of Ram. They said it was ridiculous.

My example of why it made sense was specifically you as the consumer. I said there are probably tons of people who want the MiniLED and 120hz but dont need the power of an M3Pro or Max and done need 16GB of Ram for their daily.

I am one of them too, although, I will probably go with the base M3 Pro.

But that base M3 at $1599 is very tempting.

And if one needs more ram but doesn't want to pay for pro motion, the M2 macbook air is no slouch and looks slick.

$1499 for a 13 inch M2 MBA with 24GB ram + 256GB ssd or same price for 16GB ram + 512GB SSD.

 

[Return Zero]

The 14" MBP with just the M3 is the perfect laptop for me. I don't need the power of the Pro or Max line. But I went for the 14" MBP M1 Pro for the screen.

I think it's a great machine, I just wish at that price they had bumped up the RAM (or priced it at $1499 for the 8GB).

 

[sw1tcher]

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?