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

[Chuckeee]

It is not enough of an upgrade relative to the standard m3 which I suspect is the point. It makes people who need more than the standard m3 more likely to look at the max than they used to because the standard pro is now a worse value proposition.

Users are interested in upgrading for a variety of reasons. It is not always about computing performance. I would not be surprised if the primary driver for upgrading to a M3 pro chip was the desire to use 2 external displays. Most users don’t care about more processing horsepower, it’s all about having dual monitors when you use your laptop at your desk

 

[mlayer]

I'm not in the market for any of the M3-based products as I'm a happy M2 Air user since July 2022. I still wanted to chart out how these specs and prices worked, so I built a table (my model is in blue) displaying most - not all - of the BTO options. Coming out of that effort, my biggest lingering question has more to do with inventory than anything else. If a customer walks into an Apple Store wants to walk out with a MacBook Pro, which models will be in stock for them? The choices between the chip/RAM/storage and the idiosyncrasies with the memory controllers are a bit confusing. I get that Apple paid TSMC for the entire 3 nm tape-out so they want to use every single CPU possible even if it's binned, that's fine. The issue is communicating that to the end user. (Apologies for any errors)

 

[bcortens]

Users are interested in upgrading for a variety of reasons. It is not always about computing performance. I would not be surprised if the primary driver for upgrading to a M3 pro chip was the desire to use 2 external displays. Most users don’t care about more processing horsepower, it’s all about having dual monitors when you use your laptop at your desk

So, again, none of this changes the fact that the value proposition of the m3 pro is worse than the m2 pro. That is my point.

M2 -> m2 pro:
2x performance cores
2x memory bandwidth
1.9x GPU performance

M3-M3 Pro:
1.5x performance cores
1.5x memory bandwidth
1.8x GPU performance

Compared to upgrading from M2 to M2 Pro you get less bang for your buck when buying an M3 Pro instead of an M3


Edit: I’m not even saying the m3 pro is a bad value, just that it is a worse value than m2 pro was.

 

[chucker23n1]

my biggest lingering question has more to do with inventory than anything else. If a customer walks into an Apple Store wants to walk out with a MacBook Pro, which models will be in stock for them?

You can generally expect a store to have the non-BTO models. That’s already five for the 14-inch and another four for the 16-inch.

 

[k1121j]

Did you watch the presentation? Every slide they compared it to M2.

Sure did the m2 was pictured and not mentioned at n almost as every talking point. There was more time talking then slides showing btw.

 

[cnnyy20p]

M2 Pro has 8 P-cores and 4 E-core.
M3 Pro has 6 P-cores and 6 E-core.
And with slower RAM. I’m not surprised.

 

[buckwheet]

Questionable upgrade at best. Maybe if you’re editing 8K videos, otherwise, the only difference you’re likely see is a reduction to your bank account for a performance increase you can’t feel in day to day use.

What, you mean from M1 Pro to M3 Pro? The benchmarks certainly indicate a decent bump between the two... but yeah, obviously real-world testing is the only thing that would mean much. I do tend to stick with a 2-3 year upgrade schedule, since that seems safest in terms of resale (or trade-in) value and new price. Having said all that, a space black M3 Pro definitely falls in the "nice to have" category, rather than "need to have", given how well my M1 Pro still runs.

On another note, I wish they'd create an "Audio Mode" along the lines of "Game Mode"...

 

[jlc1978]

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.

And I wish people would realize that some look at the total performance package and don’t care how Apple got there or their margins. I doubt either of us will get our wish.

It isn’t about absolute increasss, though those are lower than they should be. It is also about the fact that Apple moved the Pro down the performance stack without changing the price. All the arguments about how N3 cost money apply equally to M3 and M3 Max but we aren’t seeing anyone call for them to be decontented to make up for this cost.

Is the M3 MBP Pro faster than the M2 MBP Pro? Longer battery lie? If yes, then it’s relative position to teh M3 or M3 Max is of no consequence. It offers better performance for the same money for teh atrget demographic.

If people were consistent you’d have a point. If Apple had also removed some corres from the base M3 and the Max you’d have a point. Making one of their products worse relative to its position in prior years is not defensible if the same arguments don’t work when looking at the rest of the product stack

Cores are irrelevant to most users; perfromance is what counts. Arguing about specs may be fun but irrelevant to the real world.

 

[victorvictoria]

M5 lol. Try a panamera. Porsche >>> everything

Ever drive an M5 Competition? It's a 10 second family sedan with every luxury you can think of, and then some. I really like the Panamera, but to get that same performance, you'd need to spend about $25K more. And the back seat is not great, unlike the M5. And I have friends.

 

[mlayer]

That's a lot of extra SKUs, not to mention the case color. I remember that when the M1 iMac was released the stores didn't necessarily carry every color, which will carry over to the M3. The Tim Cook-run Apple is allergic to inventory buildup in the cannel, so I'm surprised they chose this path.

 

[eropko]

That's a lot of extra SKUs, not to mention the case color. I remember that when the M1 iMac was released the stores didn't necessarily carry every color, which will carry over to the M3. The Tim Cook-run Apple is allergic to inventory buildup in the cannel, so I'm surprised they chose this path.

They need to use every binned version to make 3nm profitable.

 

[ric22]

It really is almost only media files that requires a lot of space, as a regular office worker I was hard pressed to create more than 10-15GB per year with .doc, .xls, .ppt and such… but I guess on MR that means those people are not “Pros”

It can massively vary. If professional photographs/videos are commissioned for your presentations and you wish to store them locally (and why wouldn't you prefer to), you can eat 256GB in no time. "Just store media on external storage or cloud storage" is just making excuses for Apple's unnecessary teeny tiny storage.

 

[Technerd108]

When I got the M2 MBA I had so many people on here telling me that the M3 would be the holy Grail of chips. The 3nm process will boost performance and battery life and it will be a huge upgrade.

Well here we are with around a 15% increase in single core and 6% in multi core. Those are less than the M2 improvement over M1? Yet M2 was just an overclocked M1 and it sucked..but M3 is good even though we had a process improvement we didn't get with M2 yet we are seeing worse improvement. So is M3 a poorly overclocked M2 or what??

Look, the point is that these are decent improvements year over year and what we should expect. You can't have Earth shattering improvements every year. Also the GPU is a pretty big upgrade with ray tracing which people have been asking for.

How about gaming on a Mac as a serious platform? It would be pretty cool.

I think Apple is getting a nice clear line up of great laptops. We are at a point where no matter what Mac you get, you are getting pretty amazing performance and battery life from the air to the pro, there is no bad choice. I think the performance of the lower end is where you are getting the most value.

So people can continue to chase benchmarks or just be happy that the Macs we have now are the fastest, most capable and well designed and made Macs ever or continue to complain about a slow but steady progress on Apple Silicon on Macs.

 

[ric22]

Reminds me of a Mark Twain quote:
View attachment 2307644

Now I feel bad for making a typo in my previous post 😂

 

[name99]

M Pro is the i5 of the Apple lineup.
People expecting it to be the i9 are just being unreasonable.

Look on Steam. MOST people have a 6-core Intel CPU. 6-core these days is mid-range. Apple gives you 6 very good cores, and E-cores that are the equal and more of SMT.

Everyone wants to talk about this in terms of 24-core i9's and 32-core AMD monsters, but NO-ONE BUYS THOSE! Or more precisely, they buy them for very specialized use cases, not for mainstream personal consumption.
I'm not making this up, the numbers are very clear:

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

Apple is essentially matching their capabilities to the rest of the market. Presumably the number of cores sold in "mainstream" PCs will rise over the next few years; and Apple will follow those trends. But right now people are furious that Apple is selling to match the actual market, not some fantasy market that exists only in their imaginations.

 

[Chuckeee]

They need to use every binned version to make 3nm profitable.

Makes me wonder.

When they used to bin 68K processor chips, based on clock speed, often they would run out of binned chips, because the demand was so high. The result was, they would have to take perfectly good chips and artificially cripple them, in firmware, to meet the demand for binned chips.

Do you think this happens with Apple ARM Silicon M chips?

 

[ric22]

When I got the M2 MBA I had so many people on here telling me that the M3 would be the holy Grail of chips. The 3nm process will boost performance and battery life and it will be a huge upgrade.

Well here we are with around a 15% increase in single core and 6% in multi core. Those are less than the M2 improvement over M1? Yet M2 was just an overclocked M1 and it sucked..but M3 is good even though we had a process improvement we didn't get with M2 yet we are seeing worse improvement. So is M3 a poorly overclocked M2 or what??

Look, the point is that these are decent improvements year over year and what we should expect. You can't have Earth shattering improvements every year. Also the GPU is a pretty big upgrade with ray tracing which people have been asking for.

How about gaming on a Mac as a serious platform? It would be pretty cool.

I think Apple is getting a nice clear line up of great laptops. We are at a point where no matter what Mac you get, you are getting pretty amazing performance and battery life from the air to the pro, there is no bad choice. I think the performance of the lower end is where you are getting the most value.

So people can continue to chase benchmarks or just be happy that the Macs we have now are the fastest, most capable and well designed and made Macs ever or continue to complain about a slow but steady progress on Apple Silicon on Macs.

I think with M1 being the first Mac chip there were expectations that Apple would quickly and substantially outdo it. The speed and power of the updates haven't really lived up to the expectation. The cooling across the entire range is so much better than Apple provided for the Intel chips, but it's a challenge to even warm these things up!

 

[mmm...really]

Improving User skills increase productivity much faster than improving processor performance.

 

[coolfactor]

A meaningless comparison.

The rejigging of core counts is likely based on real-world usage data. That in itself would be a valuable improvement for the majority of users.

 

[ric22]

Users are interested in upgrading for a variety of reasons. It is not always about computing performance. I would not be surprised if the primary driver for upgrading to a M3 pro chip was the desire to use 2 external displays. Most users don’t care about more processing horsepower, it’s all about having dual monitors when you use your laptop at your desk

It's the main reason why I have a MacBook Pro for work... not that I'm complaining! The M1 Air I own for private use is fast enough for most tasks, but I miss the display, speakers, and ports. The Pros are ugly lumps compared to the M1 Air, though.

 

[coolfactor]

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

Back in 1990, my parents bought a Mac SE and ImageWriter printer for $4000.

Today's Macs are 100x more powerful and half the cost, or less.

#perspective

 

[ric22]

Back in 1990, my parents bought a Mac SE and ImageWriter printer for $4000.

Today's Macs are 100x more powerful and half the cost, or less.

#perspective

If we make the comparison more extreme, and compare modern electronics to mid twentieth century computers, it would be impossible to call any computer built this millennium expensive in when comparing compute power. Aren't we lucky that governments can build endless inexpensive supercomputers?

Returning to reality, Macs well specced with RAM and storage are expensive. It's not even a debate when the markups are so absurd.

Doesn't mean I won't buy more Macs/iPhones for home or office, but I will bemoan the fact they extort those of us that require more RAM and storage and have to bite the bullet now that they've made their Macs unrepairable and unupgradable in terms of RAM and storage....

 

[Motorola68000]

Couple backups of your iPhones and you're done on 256Gb

Waste of money to rely on increasing storage on the Mac, when you can buy external storage for very little money and have it transportable. For me its RAM that needs to be 16Gb base

 

[Motorola68000]

It can massively vary. If professional photographs/videos are commissioned for your presentations and you wish to store them locally (and why wouldn't you prefer to), you can eat 256GB in no time. "Just store media on external storage or cloud storage" is just making excuses for Apple's unnecessary teeny tiny storage.

Disagree about external storage, with the increased read write speeds it makes no sense to pay for onboard storage which is multiples of what an external will cost and if you are backing up on external anyway, then external storage is the way to go as its much more bangs for your bucks.

 

[dropadrop]

Forgetting dongles doesn't make them unpractical. Wire is bigger, seems easier to NOT forget.

Thats probably true. I’m still greatful they added actual ports to the Apple silicon pro’s.

All my colleagues presenting a lot got a pro mainly because it has an HDMI port, most of them would likely be fine with an air. But in this situation it would be hard to settle with an M2 anyway so I guess it does not really matter.