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

[danwells]

There are USB-C to HDMI cables

There are conference rooms and classrooms where the HDMI cable runs through the wall...

Yes, you can dongle it, but one less thing to forget. I've given a lot of presentations at Harvard (recent mid-career grad degree), and even there (where the IT dept. seems to have an unlimited budget), a USB-C display connection in a classroom is rare. They do sometimes have a dongle on a chain so it's right there at the podium and you don't have to remember it.

If you're someplace that replaces its projectors less frequently, you can be confronted with a VGA cable that runs through the wall (and nothing else).

 

[bcortens]

I mean… was anyone with an M2 Pro really looking to jump at an M3 Pro? I understand why Apple compared these new chips to Intel and M1.

may not be a big jump from M2, but folks with older chips will be bigger differences. 🤷🏾‍♂️

Why jump from M1 Pro? People with M1 Max to m3 max will see a much bigger difference than going from M1 Max to m2 max. However M1 Pro to m3 pro is much less viable because they moved it down the product stack for the same money … congratulations on your cheering on paying more money for fewer transistors. Only Apple can do that with the m3 pro.

 

[jgbr]

Apple: 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD is enough for base MacBook models in 2023.
Customers: No deal.
Apple: When we said scary fast, we meant the short event duration, not the Apple M3.
Customers: No deal.

Relying on Linus and LTT for a fair constructive view of apple is the last place to go. There testing methods have been bought into question enough but his lack of sound judgement of apple is legendary.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

It's thinking like this at Intel which lead to them being in their current predicament.

I think apple telegraphs how often they expect you to upgrade with the length of applecare. For tablets/phones it’s every 2 years and for computers it’s every 3.

3 years ago, it’s still intel. all the m1 pros / max are still under applecare warranty. The upgrade cycle is probably next year.

But reardless, M1 Pro -> M3 Pro looks to be 25% - 35% increase which is just on the processor side. Graphics side, M2 Pro was already 30% upgrade over m1 pro. So we’ll see on m3 pro.

i’m not like disregarding people who like to upgrade every year or every two years. For those, I say, it’s still faster. Also people often miss the point with apple processors. Apple processors have *multiple* components. IF you’re just focused on processor speed, you miss the neural engine, the video processing units, the graphics component, etc.

 

[Warped9]

I sell computers where I work. Most people don’t come in asking for specific hardware specs. A few do and often enough it’s based on what they were told and often enough wrongly. People get hung up on numbers without understanding what they mean. Most people confuse memory and storage and have no idea what RAM is or does. The most common remark I hear is, “I’m not techie.”

It’s my job to ask qualifying questions to understand their real needs and possibly potential future needs so I can lay out the best recommendations for them. Sometimes I have to tell them they need to consider spending more to get what they need and avoid ensuing frustrations. And sometimes I tell them they don’t need to spend as much as they expected to get what they need.

I count myself fortunate that I’ve never had someone come back to tell me I pointed them to something that was garbage. I have had a few admit to me they were wrong to get a Chromebook or a Windows 11 S machine and should have heeded my advice to spend a bit more.

On average most people expect their device to last 5-6 years. More than that is gravy. With Mac expectations are generally different as many have older Macs that average 5-10 or so years old.

 

[Neil J. Squillante]

This release was all about rebalancing their entire laptop lineup. The M2 Pro and M2 Max were too close to each other and the M2 13” MacBook Pro was the high-selling forgotten stepchild that was far too close to the 13” MBA. This move was very similar to last year’s move to differentiate the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pros with the iPhone 14’s retaining the prior year’s A15 processor with only an extra GPU core to separate it from the iPhone 13.

A solid analysis. Also, most people benefit more from single core benchmark improvements. The double digit improvement over the M2 Pro is impressive not for M2 Pro users but for M1 users running low on storage or otherwise unhappy with their configurations and for Intel users who have been waiting for the right time, helped along by Apple no longer supporting a growing number of Intel Macs for macOS upgrades. I suspect many Intel holdouts will buy this series, including the forthcoming Mac mini.

 

[GuruZac]

Seems like you buried the lede with “14% faster … in terms of single-core … 6% faster in … multi-core” despite downgrading 1/4 of the performance cores to efficiency cores. It wasn’t long ago when Intel couldn’t achieve 6% faster multi-core generation-to-generation.

What happened is that Apple shifted the Pro to be more efficiency oriented. What doesn’t show in these benchmarks is power consumption in synthetic use cases, much less real world.

This is actually a fantastic point. The M3 is actually notably faster per core given that it’s still 6% faster with two less performance cores. Interesting.

 

[Jorbanead]

The entire tech space is dunking on Intel's 14th gen processors but Apple will get a pass with M3 being a flop.

Why?

Uh…. It’s not even close to being a flop?

Did you miss the part where M3 Max is almost twice as powerful?

 

[satchmo]

But the M3 Pro comes in space black

Apple knows what it's doing.
They sweeten the pot with colour if the performance gain isn't enough.

 

[hans1972]

Jeez what's wrong with people who have no expectations nowadays. Everyone should be demanding the fastest and most powerful processor from Apple, not being satisfied with lacklustre crap that just manage to scrap past.

With that attitude of not expecting only the best, there won't be innovation and we'll be stuck with crappy incremental updates.

If that's your expectation, Apple will disappoint you 19 out 20 years. Maybe even 20 out of 20 years.

I predict you already are and will continue to be one unhappy Apple customer.

 

[baryon]

Just realized that my Intel 16 inch still does everything I want. I can color grade 6K raw without any slowdowns, everything runs smoothly, I never run out of RAM and the computer doesn't feel heavy or huge because it's the older slim design.

The only thing I don't like about it is that it's missing the SD card slot, MagSafe and HDMI, and I don't particularly like the touchbar. But neither of those are a reason to upgrade, after all, I agreed to these compromises when I bought this machine.

I'll upgrade when this one can no longer do what I need, and it's still running great. I think a lot of people buy into the hype that just because there's a machine that's 11 times faster than theirs, they should buy it. But if "11 times slower" is still "faster than 80% of laptops" then it's not that bad.

 

[mrmister]

No, it won't.

The 13" MBA will not be updated without the 15" MBA being updated and the latter was updated too recently for that to happen.

I agree—I screwed up and said 2023, but obvs I meant 2024, apologies. Edited the post with a note to this effect.

 

[ElectricPotato]

Lower memory bandwidth affecting overall performance?

The M5 Multitronic Unit ™ will fix that up. It could be the ultimate computer.

 

[CARIB_APPLE]

I recently got my current phone three months ago. My previous phone was five years old. I got my current iPad a year ago. The previous iPad was five years old. I plan on getting a new computer soon given my current computer is twelve years old.

My point exactly.

 

[Pentium]

It is easy, if you have M2 Pro, do not upgrade. It is not a phone.

 

[bcortens]

A solid analysis. Also, most people benefit more from single core benchmark improvements. The double digit improvement over the M2 Pro is impressive not for M2 Pro users but for M1 users running low on storage or otherwise unhappy with their configurations and for Intel users who have been waiting for the right time, helped along by Apple no longer supporting a growing number of Intel Macs for macOS upgrades. I suspect many Intel holdouts will buy this series, including the forthcoming Mac mini.

It’s not a solid analysis for a couple of reasons:

The M3 Pro is sold for the same money and is positioned as the same sort of upgrade over the standard M3 as the M2 Pro was over the M2 despite being substantially cheaper to manufacture and offering a smaller increase over M3 than M2 Pro did over M2.

The new lineup is not more balanced but just different. The high performance counts should have gone 4-8-12 instead we have 4-6-12 which is a substantially less balanced configuration. GPU performance is also a smaller incremente form M3 to M3 Pro (vs M2 to M2 Pro) because of the loss of a GPU core and the cutting 50% from the memory bus.

It’s fine if you want to defend this but you are not really defending a more balanced lineup, you are defending Apples margins going up.

 

[mrmister]

I think the M2 MBA line-up (13" and 15") will get the M3 update in June 2024 at WWDC. That will give the 15" MBA one full year run with the M2 chip.

This seems late to me, in terms of the 13" MBA, which is their best selling laptop by far, but totally plausible.

 

[recklesslife85]

The irony is, it’s more sheepish to hate on Apple for being Apple.

Edit: Also, to dunk further, your reaction score pales in comparison to this sheep’s.

Do you remember another animal that only wore the clothing of the sheep?

🐑

Someone’s butthurt 😂😂😂

 

[topmounter]

Honestly, I thought it was pretty much common knowledge already that the M3 is and upgrade for M1 users. From what I've seen so far it looks like a good upgrade from my M1 Pro, so I'll be considering it in the New Year (and I *love* that new black colour). Personally, I have no interest in upgrading every year anyway.

That seems to be the issue that Apple has right now, while the upgrade from an Intel Mac is easily justifiable now... unless you're pushing the M1 to its limits with tasks that take hours and limit productivity while they're running, e.g. sequencing DNA or working with 8K ProRes files or local compiles or whatever... the M1 certainly doesn't feel slow in any qualitative sense, certainly not like the Intel Macs have that I've owned over the years felt slow (long load times, stuttering, noisy fan, excess heat, etc.).

 

[mrmister]

It’s fine if you want to defend this but you are not really defending a more balanced lineup, you are defending Apples margins going up.

I do wish sometimes people would just admit they are more interested in defending Apple's margins more than they are caring what's good for actual customers.

 

[ric22]

Range is relative to the product line, i.e., other products in the line, not the price of other computers on the market. What you might consider "expensive" someone else might consider reasonable. Especially someone who has used Macs before and gotten many, many years of use out of them.

As long as the someone in question isn't an idiot, they'll admit Macs are expensive 😂

 

[topmounter]

The MBA 13, by far Apple's best selling laptop, hasn't been updated since June 2022.

Yes, it will get an M3 in 2024.

The M4 will not arrive so soon as six months from now, either. Come on people, try.

(edit note—I screwed up and said 2023, but obvs I meant 2024, apologies.)

2024. I don't think anyone expects a spec bump to M3 for the Air in what remains of 2023 after Monday's 'event'.

 

[Ro_Ro_Bear]

Can't take the MaxTech channel seriously for commenting on this. Its always the same clickbait type of videos full of indignation made. In this case, conveniently done before any reviews are made to ramp up views before any serious analysis done.

 

[theluggage]

The pro is a worse product relative to the max and standard m3 than it used to be.

Apple had one job - make the M3 Pro better than the M2 Pro. Job done - its slightly faster, has significantly better battery life and will most likely prove to have a faster GPU, esp. when hardware ray tracing comes into effect.

Yes, it looks like the M3 Max has got a better upgrade - but so what?

Anyway, the target market for M3 machines will be people upgrading from Intel and M1, not a relative handful of customers who buy a new $2k minimum laptop every year.

The m3 pro has 37 billion transistors (3 billion less than m2 pro) the max is at 96 billion. Each m3 pro costs Apple significantly less than the m2 pro and this they are increasing margins…

Sure, the transistor count will be a factor in the marginal cost but little things like, oh, say, switching to a new 3nm process do require a teensy bit of investment that needs to be recouped. Also, its no clear but it looks like they've moved to having completely different dies for the Pro and Max rather than the Pro being a Max with a bit left off.

Anyway, last time I looked, Apple were a for-profit company and - in the current climate - its a wonder that they haven't increased the base prices of the Mx Pro machines in line with inflation.

If they had kept the pro at 8+4 they would have achieved this exact aim without unnecessarily decontenting the pro. The max got more cores, there was no need to decontent the pro as well.

Yes there was - battery life. M3 has allowed them to reduce the performance:efficiency core ratio in the M3 Pro and still (slightly) out-perform the M2. A reasonable trade off in a chip that will primarily be used in laptops.

 

[ksj1]

As long as the someone is question isn't an idiot, they'll admit Macs are expensive 😂

Show us on the doll where Apple touched you...