M3 or M1 pro?

[vidario]

Hi all, a doubt about buying a new macbook that I will mainly use for photography. I'm undecided between the new macbook pro M3 base (but with 16 gb of ram) and the 14' macbook pro M1 pro. Considering that I can find them for the same price I was wondering if I should get a 2 year old model or get the latest model. Advantages of the M3: 1) screen brightness; 2) battery life. Advantages of the M1: 1) an extra thunderbolt port; 2) ability to connect 2 external monitors.
I was unable to find comparisons between the performance of the basic M3 and the M1 pro.
I cannot afford the expense for an M3 Pro at the moment.
What do you recommend?
Thanks!

 

[casperes1996]

The M3 will perform better in basically all situations. Some situations it won’t he by a noticeable amount and maybe be a percentage point slower. But in others it will be more significant. Single threaded performance especially is a fair bit better. If comparing with the full M1 Pro multithreaded might be a smidge worse.

I would personally get the M3 if it were me but how much the thunderbolt port and screen connectivity matters to you is something only you can answer

 

[lJoSquaredl]

I'm in the same boat, can't decide between the M1 Pro (possibly even 16") or the M3 MBP with an external monitor...maybe M2 MBP since it's also around the same price. I doubt you'd see much difference in performance for photography tho, even my M1 Air does a decent job with any photo work I've thrown at it. I'm curious how each does with games tho since the GPUs probably really start to shine over one another in that regard. (or 3D work but I don't do that) Wouldn't mind seeing an M1 Pro vs M3 comparison from a YouTuber, it's an odd matchup that seems unfair but after 3 years the M3 may be pulling ahead in a few ways.

If you need battery life tho, the M3 will probably be the best since it's basically the Air models with a bigger battery. That seems to be the main appeal of the M3 MBP, it's basically the MBA with the better screen and a fan too cool for sustained longer loads.

 

[Semio]

Check out geekbench, you can see the performance scores there. A 10 Core M1 Pro will beat a base M3, and the M3 Pro is marginally faster. Apple has reduced the amount of performance cores in the M3 Pro to 5, the M3 Pro scores around around 13k on geekbench, the M1 Pro around 12k, so they are very close and the 10 Core M1 Pro (with 8 performance cores) will definitely beat out the base M3. As for screen brightness, you can use an app (Vivid) to get constant 1000 nits on the M1 Pro. I highly doubt the screen hardware in the M3 is different, Apple are just allowing it to run at 600 vs 500, but with Vivid, it's a non issue. Apple also nerfed the memory bandwidth in the M3 to 150GB/s, its 200 in the M1 Pro. If you are specifically talking about a base M3 14 inch MacBook Pro, I would take the M1 Pro Chip model as long as it is the 10 core variant with 16GB ram and 1TB SSD. Apple have cut too much from the base 14 M3.

 

[cwosigns]

I was on the fence because Micro Center had the new M3 (base) for $1439 USD and a certified refurbished M1 Pro (10c CPU, 16c GPU, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) for a lower price ($1350 USD). I actually went in thinking I would buy a 15" MBA, but I went with the M1 Pro and it's such a great laptop. It's probably overkill for what I will use it for (writing, photography).

What did you end up getting?

 

[rmn1644]

I bought that M3 MBP from Microcenter back around Christmas to replace my M1 Pro (new computer gets me a tax write off in 2023). Crazy that Microcenter is now all over the country after starting on Lane Avenue. Loved that place as a teen!

I see now that the M1 Pro beats the M3 by about 25% on Machine Learning applications. I have been using LM Studio to have on-device AI, and wouldn't mind that extra speed now.

Apple really hit it out of the park with the M1 Pro chip! Maybe I should have just gotten another one.