M3 Pro Chip Barely Faster Than M2 Pro in Unverified Benchmark Result

[chrono1081]

14% and 6% are decent improvements. Why would you expect more for an annual upgrade? We don't need a revolution every year...just incremental improvements.

Not sure why people are downvoting this. Your take is 100% realistic. People seem to be stuck in a 90s mindset when computers made massive leaps year over year, but we're literally reaching a limit defined by physics here in terms of what we can do with computing.

 

[tobybrut]

Many folks only see Apple as a "do no wrong" company so will defend all the product decisions regardless of how asinine they are. I mean, 8/256 as the base in 2023...

Not true. The M3 lineup is a correction of a mistake Apple made originally in making the M1/2 Pro and M1/2 Max too close to each other and confusing people with the MBA’s and 13” MBP. They screwed up their lineup which required the fix with the M3 line. You can’t fix things if it weren’t broken. This lineup is an admission from Apple that their previous segmentation strategy sucked.

 

[bradman83]

That's the same mentality I heard when Apple was still using PowerPC. That didn't go the way Apple wanted.

Just because Apple may have the advantage now doesn't mean they always will. Never rest on your laurels.

I think part of the reason why PowerPC failed was because Apple relied on others (Motorola and IBM) to make their chips, and it was an incredibly niche market for those companies and therefore they didn't have as strong an incentive or the resources to keep the chips current with Intel and AMD. Indeed the PowerPC G5 was basically a re-hashed IBM POWER4 chip, and IBM had little incentive to try to scale POWER4 to an energy efficient laptop design given that it was otherwise a beefy workstation/server chip. Given the increasing movement towards laptops in the early/mid 2000's that was PowerPC's death knell.

Apple's position today is considerably different. They have full control of chip designs. And whereas in the PowerPC era chips were manufactured in house, today outsourcing foundries like TSMC make chips while companies like AMD and Apple design them. If Intel or Samsung were to regain process node superiority and TSMC stumbles long term there's nothing to stop Apple from moving A- and M- series production to those foundries (and Intel has even publicly courted Apple to consider using their foundry services to make their ARM chips in the future).

 

[chrono1081]

Many folks only see Apple as a "do no wrong" company so will defend all the product decisions regardless of how asinine they are. I mean, 8/256 as the base in 2023...

This isn't true. People are simply pointing out flaws in your rationale. On an intel chip, yes 8/256 is terrible. On an M series chip it's actually pretty good. My buddy literally has the base model m2 MacBook Air and edits 4k surgery videos on it all the time just fine. M series chips perform vastly different, you can't compare the two directly.

When you point that out though, posters like you assume we are "defending apple on asinine product decisions" when we're simply just speaking the truth. It's a good option for people who dont want to spend a ton on a computer.

 

[jlc1978]

Because its not realistic. For both consumers and apple. Nobody is upgrading their laptops every year.

No, but users with older machines will. Every year, the upgrade cycle has a set of users looking to upgrade their older machines; annual upgrades target that group.

In addition, there are also new buyers.

Apple being Apple. Most of you sheep will buy it for its shinny new colour anyways 😂

Now I can finally stop worrying about color coordinating my MBP with my wardrobe as black goes with everything.

This forum feels like Groundhog Day.

Every day.

This devalues systems when you’re spending thousands on systems. Especially their pro systems and I say that loosely now as I question the pro offerings (as a pro)

How so? Existing MBP don't magically stop working and meeting their needs. if they need more power they now have an upgrade choice.

It's fair to question the pro offerings if tehy don't meet your needs, but that doesn't mean it isn't a solid product lineup.

Many folks only see Apple as a "do no wrong" company so will defend all the product decisions regardless of how asinine they are. I mean, 8/256 as the base in 2023...

For many people 8/256 is fine and making Macs 16/512 base would raise the price needlessly for a large part of the user base. If you need more the option is there.

Apple's position today is considerably different. They have full control of chip designs. And whereas in the PowerPC era chips were manufactured in house, today outsourcing foundries like TSMC make chips while companies like AMD and Apple design them. If Intel or Samsung were to regain process node superiority and TSMC stumbles long term there's nothing to stop Apple from moving A- and M- series production to those foundries (and Intel has even publicly courted Apple to consider using their foundry services to make their ARM chips in the future).

Excellant point. Chip architecture is the valuable part of the chip manufacturing process; by controlling that and letting someone else make the investment in production is a smart business move.

 

[jbachandouris]

I have an M1 Pro 512GB that I still have one year of payments on. Pretty sure I can’t sell it for even the amount owed. It’s rarely left the house so it’s perfect. Even kept that paper between keyboard and screen.

 

[jbachandouris]

Decent yes, scary nope!

Scary price maybe.

 

[OrenLindsey]

I knew it.

 

[Fuzzball84]

You always get Posers no matter what the technology. I'm sure some hipsters want to pose at a coffee shop with their latest Android phone or Surface tablet.

I don’t think ive ever seen a poser with a surface tablet. Business users, professionals and students doing real work, yes.

Posers with MacBooks, absolutely 100 percent. They are a high end consumer good. It’s part of their marketing.

When you buy an Apple product part of the payment you make is the Apple tax for buying “high end”.

Apple has this weird following which no other company really has. It had it way back in the 90s.

Not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s there.

 

[Corefile]

This isn't true. People are simply pointing out flaws in your rationale. On an intel chip, yes 8/256 is terrible. On an M series chip it's actually pretty good. My buddy literally has the base model m2 MacBook Air and edits 4k surgery videos on it all the time just fine. M series chips perform vastly different, you can't compare the two directly.

When you point that out though, posters like you assume we are "defending apple on asinine product decisions" when we're simply just speaking the truth. It's a good option for people who dont want to spend a ton on a computer.

But you /are/ defending 8/256 even if you don't see that yourself. The component costs from 8 to 16GB and 256 to 512GB are negligible in volume shipments. In fact, component sourcing of lower spec chips is often more EXPENSIVE than volumes of the higher spec part. Apple makes terrible decisions to keep their bottom line profit at the customer's cost.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

This isn't true. People are simply pointing out flaws in your rationale. On an intel chip, yes 8/256 is terrible. On an M series chip it's actually pretty good. My buddy literally has the base model m2 MacBook Air and edits 4k surgery videos on it all the time just fine. M series chips perform vastly different, you can't compare the two directly.

When you point that out though, posters like you assume we are "defending apple on asinine product decisions" when we're simply just speaking the truth. It's a good option for people who dont want to spend a ton on a computer.

I think 8GB of RAM is still a decent baseline for most users. I have several Windows laptops and they do just fine on 8GB. I also have three Mac Mini’s (2012/2018/2023) and two of them only have 8GB and they also do fine as well.

 

[Harry Haller]

14% and 6% are decent improvements. Why would you expect more for an annual upgrade? We don't need a revolution every year...just incremental improvements.

You’re right of course.
But “scary fast” has left the chat and Apple have only themselves to blame for setting unreasonably hyped up expectations.

 

[tobybrut]

But you /are/ defending 8/256 even if you don't see that yourself. The component costs from 8 to 16GB and 256 to 512GB are negligible in volume shipments. In fact, component sourcing of lower spec chips is often more EXPENSIVE than volumes of the higher spec part. Apple makes terrible decisions to keep their bottom line profit at the customer's cost.

I would point out there is no M3 MBP that has 256GB of storage.

 

[chrono1081]

But you /are/ defending 8/256 even if you don't see that yourself. The component costs from 8 to 16GB and 256 to 512GB are negligible in volume shipments. In fact, component sourcing of lower spec chips is often more EXPENSIVE than volumes of the higher spec part. Apple makes terrible decisions to keep their bottom line profit at the customer's cost.

You can call it defending, I call it reasoning why the decision is made. It's not the computer I'd pick but I'm not the target audience. The target audience is people who don't want to spend a ton and want a lower cost option that does what they want it to do. If that's "defending" in your eyes then so be it but to the rest of us, we understand base models exist for a reason.

I know more than a few people who grabbed the base model because it's what they could afford. Any higher price and they'd be forced to look at different computers.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

This isn't true. People are simply pointing out flaws in your rationale. On an intel chip, yes 8/256 is terrible. On an M series chip it's actually pretty good. My buddy literally has the base model m2 MacBook Air and edits 4k surgery videos on it all the time just fine. M series chips perform vastly different, you can't compare the two directly.

When you point that out though, posters like you assume we are "defending apple on asinine product decisions" when we're simply just speaking the truth. It's a good option for people who dont want to spend a ton on a computer.

It depends on what you do with it, but my >1 year old Dell Latitude 5430 work-issued laptop is a 12th gen i7 with 8gb and a 256gb SSD, and it does just fine.

I could have probably done fine with an 8gb M1, but since I keep my computers for years (5+), I decided on 16gb.

 

[t2000tjt]

People are looking only at raw performance. This is the laptop version of the chip, I bet it uses less power than the M2, yet is 14% faster. That is an accomplishment, especially for something in a Macbook Pro as it extends battery life.
They should see how much kWh each uses while hitting those geekbench numbers.

 

[Andres Cantu]

If Apple was going to start limiting certain aspects of their chips generation by generation, they should have done so since the start.

The SSD speeds, the memory bandwidth, and the number of cores. Then, its customers would not have know they were limiting them on purpose, or at least it wouldn’t be as obvious. Less backlash.

For now, M1 and M2 users should be pretty happy that their systems weren’t limited or as limited by comparison as M3. I’m glad they didn’t go that route for M1 and M2 for the most part.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

What Apple is doing here is the same strategy as for current iPhones and most of their other 3-4 tiered products:

If you want substantial improvements on most specs compared to the two previous generations, then you spend top dollar to get either the high-end or highest-end product.

If you spend less then you get substantially less of an upgrade. So much less that an upgrade barely makes sense when considering potential resale/trade-in value of your old Mac vs. the cost of acquiring a new one.

M3 and M3 Pro are the low-end and mid-tier products of this generation and only offer improvements on some specs.

M1 and M1 Pro owners will need to wait to M5/M5 Pro or M6/M6 Pro to get meaningful upgrades.

Love or hate it, that's the state of the now very mature personal computer market.

 

[3xBoom]

Never used Apple silicon for any extended period of time. Been waiting for an "all in one" with M2 or M3 and a 27"+ display. Not getting the wish, likely will be updating my work 2017 iMac to M3 Max 14" MBP space black. Was considering Studio M2 Ultra but looks like M3 Max will do the job. 10-15% gain in a year and a 3 nm chip sounds good to me. Would you sneer at a 10-15% pay raise? ...'xactly...

 

[ZebedeeG]

🤔

There's a lot of debate and some strong opinions...

Has anyone here actually used an M3 machine of any description yet?

😆

 

[h.gilbert]

14% and 6% are decent improvements. Why would you expect more for an annual upgrade? We don't need a revolution every year...just incremental improvements.

The article literally says the M3 Max is up to 45% faster and the M3 20% so yes, you'd expect more.

 

[darthbane2k]

What difference does this make? You’re not supposed to be upgrading your Mac every year

 

[MacTiki]

This whole line up screams rushed

Slumping M2 sales.
M3 release of in October.
= M2 Black Friday Sales.

Look for M3 Extreme in Space Gray this spring.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Typically a newer generation of CPU has higher performance, and in the case of the M3, it also switched to 3nm, which also increases performance, so with the new CPU and new 3nm, we still only get 6% better?

There's a saying that one can't notice performance increase unless over 10%. The M3 barely surpasses that in single core and misses it on multi-core.

 

[MayaUser]

The article literally says the M3 Max is up to 45% faster and the M3 20% so yes, you'd expect more.

No. M3 max has extra power cores. M3 pro gets slightly better by REMOVING powerful cores and still delivering these scores.
Everybody including Intel can get more power by adding cores and drawing more power, but very rare you see a slightly improving by removing things. M3 pro is an impressive improvement especially with meshing and ray tracing