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M3 Max Chip Around as Fast as M2 Ultra in Early Benchmark Results
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yep
M3 Pro is a downgrade from M2 Pro (less mem bandwidth, less p-cores)
probably the only reason they added 2 e-cores is so id doesn't look worse that M2 Pro on paper
imagine the tech news claiming M3 Pro has less cores than previous model
The 22-hour battery life is basically a marketing gimmick/trick, as it applies only to the non-pro chip playing the Apple TV app.
Real battery life is in fact: up to 15 hrs wireless web on M3 and up to 12 hrs wireless web on the pro chips. For the pro chips you can half the battery life you may have been expecting for basic web browsing.
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What with? Are you hoping for an M3 Ultra?Yea, it’s wise to wait. I have a full specked M2 Ultra here and will probably have to replace it again in march or June the latest now
With 22 hours of power on your laptop? Faster E cores? Ray Tracing and mesh?
Stop your BS
A high-ned cpu is usually bought to run one specific task really fast. Not just geekbench, but most single-score benchmarks are virtually useless for them. One should read a review with a couple dozen individual tests run, and pick the ones that apply to the expected workload. Every other is just noise. Cinebench at least gives you a rough idea about raw power, while geekbench only tells you that yeah, for most things cpu doesn't matter much anymore.
For server CPUs, sure. AWS, Azure, GCP aren't going to buy Threadripper, nor does AMD's marketing aim it at them. They talk about "creative professionals" (sound familiar?), and yes, those will have burst tasks that scale to many cores. But they'll also be idling a ton. Most of your time in a work day isn't actually spent rendering something. It's spent interacting with the UI, looking for the right file, or even more mundanely reading/answering e-mail or participating in some WebEx conference. Not to mention all kinds of background stuff. Single-core and heterogenous cores will help you more in those moments (which will likely make up the majority of your workday) than a high core count.
(You can mitigate this somewhat by getting a Threadripper shared by multiple members of the team, but now you're introducing complexity — much higher latency due to networking, most notably. The team won't love that approach.)
Yes, absolutely.
Nobody should be making a purchasing a decision based on these benchmarks, especially given that we don't fully know their veracity at this point (though they seem plausible to me).
Exactly. Your bottleneck is usually I/O, and when it is CPU, single-threaded usually helps you more than 96 cores do. The M3 Ultra's likely 32 cores will already be spending a lot of time idling.
B-but the experts on this forum said it was a rushed half-baked product!
Compared to the M2 Max, don't expect too much — the M3 Pro has 25% fewer p-cores. Probably a wash.
Compared to the M1 Pro, though, each core is a fair bit faster. And battery life should be much better: the M1 Pro only had 2 e-cores; the M3 Pro has 6. And each of them is a lot faster.
Absolutely. Depending on the type of work you do, being able to pick up your laptop and take it home, or to a different department or even a Starbucks to check on things is a big deal. Sure, most consumers can do their work with a M1 Air, but for folks who require the power and battery life, it is a big deal. We can do more on mobile and only use a dedicated rendering machine for your final product.
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I hope so... It's time for a new desktop here and an M3 Max Mac Studio would be perfect. A guess is they are not waiting until WWDC... January sounds like a plan... just as companies start buying for a new year.
I find it funny everyone seems to be claiming the M3 pro is a downgrade to the M2 Pro just by looking at specs and not actually seeing it in real world usage. Sure the memory bandwidth may be lower and it has less cores but that doesn't mean it is a downgrade. It could still be slightly faster overall than the M2 Pro.
I also find it odd how people are complaining that the M3 should be compared to the M2 and its likely not a huge upgrade fro the M2. Well duh. This is a single generational incremental update. No sane M2 users should be upgrading to a M3 yet. Thats not how computers have ever worked. The M3 is intended for those still on Intel or early M1 adopters ready for a bit more. Its keeping the momentum of growth going and giving a newer slightly faster upgrade incentive for those that have not moved to the M2 series yet.
I moved from a M1 MBA to a M1 Pro MBP because I wanted the XDR display and slightly better overall laptop. That was an upgrade because I jumped up chip levels from standard to pro. I will likely do the same again this time going from my M1 Pro to the M3 Max MBP. Not just because of the M1 to M3 generation leap but moving up from the Pro to the Max. Previously going from Pro to Max only really added GPU cores which are nice but only help in certain situations. This time the M3 Max is better than the M3 Pro even for CPU tasks. Plus I was holding out for the 3D GPU raytracing.
I was considering getting a M2 Ultra Mac Studio and just keeping my M1 Pro MBP when I'm away from my desk but now I'm pretty tempted to just trade in my M1 Pro for $900 off of the price of a nice new M3 Max MBP. This will also bump me up from 16 GB of ram to 48 GB of ram which is a huge jump for me. This is one heck of a laptop.
We have yet to see how the GPU will stack up compared to the M2 Ultra GPU. The M2 Ultra may still have an edge there. Also keep in mind the M2 Ultra Mac Studio has more ports (6 TB4 ports) and double the memory bandwidth since its two Max chips stacked together. It also has double the video encoders/decoders. Don't rule out the M2 Ultra just yet. Raw CPU benchmarks rarely matter much these days. Especially for those that actually need this level of hardware and likely use software that does make great use of more GPU power.
I also find it odd how people are complaining that the M3 should be compared to the M2 and its likely not a huge upgrade fro the M2. Well duh. This is a single generational incremental update. No sane M2 users should be upgrading to a M3 yet. Thats not how computers have ever worked. The M3 is intended for those still on Intel or early M1 adopters ready for a bit more. Its keeping the momentum of growth going and giving a newer slightly faster upgrade incentive for those that have not moved to the M2 series yet.
I moved from a M1 MBA to a M1 Pro MBP because I wanted the XDR display and slightly better overall laptop. That was an upgrade because I jumped up chip levels from standard to pro. I will likely do the same again this time going from my M1 Pro to the M3 Max MBP. Not just because of the M1 to M3 generation leap but moving up from the Pro to the Max. Previously going from Pro to Max only really added GPU cores which are nice but only help in certain situations. This time the M3 Max is better than the M3 Pro even for CPU tasks. Plus I was holding out for the 3D GPU raytracing.
I was considering getting a M2 Ultra Mac Studio and just keeping my M1 Pro MBP when I'm away from my desk but now I'm pretty tempted to just trade in my M1 Pro for $900 off of the price of a nice new M3 Max MBP. This will also bump me up from 16 GB of ram to 48 GB of ram which is a huge jump for me. This is one heck of a laptop.
We have yet to see how the GPU will stack up compared to the M2 Ultra GPU. The M2 Ultra may still have an edge there. Also keep in mind the M2 Ultra Mac Studio has more ports (6 TB4 ports) and double the memory bandwidth since its two Max chips stacked together. It also has double the video encoders/decoders. Don't rule out the M2 Ultra just yet. Raw CPU benchmarks rarely matter much these days. Especially for those that actually need this level of hardware and likely use software that does make great use of more GPU power.
Apple uses ambiguous charts because they show the data without being too complicated. There are maybe 10% of Apple users who care about the details, if that. It’s only a small subset of us who are geeks who really care about benchmarks. Most people just care that it works.
And when they stick a M3 in a iPad it still be limited by the crappy OS
I suspect it will indeed be slightly faster. If it is slower, it'll be barely measurable; I can't imagine Apple wanting to ship an SoC that's a significant downgrade.
Indeed.
The average upgrade cycle is more like four to five years. For pros, it's a bit shorter, but corporations tend to upgrade every three years. So those people buying an M3 Pro now wouldn't even have the M1 Pro yet (that was late 2021!). They're in for a huge upgrade.
Sure, but the memory bandwidth is already factored into these results. And for CPU, at least with the M1 generation, we know that they barely saturated above 200 GiB/s. They never got close to 400, much less the M1 Ultra's 800. It's the GPU where high bandwidth truly comes into play.
M3Max is definitely the pick of the M3 series.
The M1 and M2 Max were both only slightly better than the pro chip. Now it looks like the Max is a significant step up
The M1 and M2 Max were both only slightly better than the pro chip. Now it looks like the Max is a significant step up
This is good news for Apple users, as it looks like a top level M3 Ultra Mac Studio or Mac Pro will be 32 Core CPU and 80 Core GPU. Hope the M3 Ultra will utilize all that power and will be optimized to work with the 2 of the M3 Max chips tied together inside properly in the M3 Ultra chip. Hopefully the M3 Ultra machines (Mac Studio/Mac Pro) will have 256GB RAM Maximum and 16TB SSD drive options.
Can't wait to see what the graphics performance will be for the M3 Max! (and M3 Ultra)
Can't wait to see what the graphics performance will be for the M3 Max! (and M3 Ultra)
Ya. But it’s more important for MacBooks that studios. Thieves should be able to spot their target from across the hall.
22 hours almost idling(web browsing, movie watching), totally worth nearly $5k for this, really nothing fancy.
Get back to me once you get 22h with decent graphics related work or gaming, then Apple can show off with 22h.
Anyway, regarding professional graphics, there is no workaround Nvidia RTX (ex. Quadro) cards, Apple graphics is a toy compared to Nvidia.
But yeah a speedy Apple Laptop might be useful to compile Apple Software, that’s it, but just until the heat and throttle kicks in.
Looking forward to the M3 Pro in the Mac Studio. I thought the switch from Intel was supposed to stop long waits, hopefully this a hangover from Covid disruptions and things will change.