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

[Technerd108]

All I can say is now we have a true M3 MBP. Not a M3 Pro or Max but a proper 14" MBP with M3 at not a huge increase in cost over the old 13" MBP. Considering inflation, cost of the new chips, all of the upgrades the 14" has over the previous generation it seems like a large group of people should be happy. On top of that we are at a point where M series chips are so fast you really don't need a Pro or Max for the vast majority of users.

The 14" MBP configured the same as the base model last year with M3 Pro costs exactly the same but you are getting a better chip not the binned one of last generation. Considering that these chips cost more and inflation costs in production this is another win for consumers.

The area it hurts is the higher tier M3 Pro users who are getting less P cores than last gen but if you go up to the Max you are back in the sweet spot.

So really only a certain subset of users are getting a little less of a deal than last gen but the majority are getting a better deal or better components for the same cost. M3 is a decent upgrade and the GPU is a very significant upgrade with ray tracing.

So I just don't really see why everyone is complaining.

 

[bcortens]

Actually I did complain about M1 Max battery life. I still complain about it. Keep in mind that’s why they doubled the e-core count on the M2’s. I don’t have an M2 Pro or Max to complain about since I don’t how the battery life is. Remember the M1 Pro/Max had only 2 e-cores. If Apple had kept the M3 Pro at 4 e-cores, the same as the M2 Pro, no I wouldn’t be complaining about it because I still wouldn’t have bought it. I only complain about things I have and don’t like, not things I don’t have and don’t have any experience with.

I do find it odd that Apple went for a 3-chip memory array on some models and 4-chip array on others, hence the difference in memory bandwidths (similar to the old problem of using one NAND storage chip versus two that has since been rectified in the M3 Macs). I’m curious if this has to do with bad chip yields where a memory controller was damaged. This weird memory array also exists on the M3 Max, but I’m not complaining about it because I don’t know the reason for it.

You’ll notice the binned M3 Max has only 3 memory chips, lowering its memory bandwidth, while the unbinned version has 4 memory chips for the full 400GB/s. This is why the M3 Max binned supports only 36GB and 92GB of RAM using 3 modules of 12GB and 32GB. Meanwhile the unbinned version supports 48GB, 64GB, and 128GB using four modules of 12GB, 16GB, and 32GB. I’m curious why the binned version doesn’t support 48GB using 16GB modules.

I remember the 2 p-core weirdness. I have an M1 Pro and have never found battery life to be an issue however given the size of the GPU on the Max I can see how it could have been.

 

[bcortens]

All I can say is now we have a true M3 MBP. Not a M3 Pro or Max but a proper 14" MBP with M3 at not a huge increase in cost over the old 13" MBP. Considering inflation, cost of the new chips, all of the upgrades the 14" has over the previous generation it seems like a large group of people should be happy. On top of that we are at a point where M series chips are so fast you really don't need a Pro or Max for the vast majority of users.

The 14" MBP configured the same as the base model last year with M3 Pro costs exactly the same but you are getting a better chip not the binned one of last generation. Considering that these chips cost more and inflation costs in production this is another win for consumers.

The area it hurts is the higher tier M3 Pro users who are getting less P cores than last gen but if you go up to the Max you are back in the sweet spot.

So really only a certain subset of users are getting a little less of a deal than last gen but the majority are getting a better deal or better components for the same cost. M3 is a decent upgrade and the GPU is a very significant upgrade with ray tracing.

So I just don't really see why everyone is complaining.

What? The 11 core (binned) chip starts at $1999 usd, the same as the old 10 core binned chip did??

 

[Technerd108]

What? The 11 core (binned) chip starts at $1999 usd, the same as the old 10 core binned chip did??

Oh, my bad. I could have sworn there was only M3 or M3 Pro in the 14" and no binned option. I will have to go back and check. Still even if it is the same as the previous gen you still aren't paying any more and getting the same specs with a newer, faster, chip with a better GPU. Only memory bandwidth is slightly less. Considering inflation and the fact that M3 has to cost more to produce than M2 seems like it is still a win.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

The problem is that silicon competitors are improving at a much faster rate so Apple's watt/performance superiority will be very short lived if it continues at this pace.

Jim Keller has already stated the Zen 5 mixed performance Chiplet core types and Xilinx Neural Engine SoC [All Zen 5 come with Chiplet GPUs and Neural Chiplet Processors] are a huge leap in performance, scalability and efficiency over Zen 4.

 

[magbarn]

Maybe strategic/marketing to differentiate or more likely due to poor yields on the new 3

Seems if you're after a 14" the two best options are a Refurb 14" M2 Pro or splurging for an M3 Max.

At their price points neither the M3 or M3 Pro 14s make sense compared to a Refurb 14" M2 Pro; especially if you're getting the M3 with 16GB RAM.

i just scored a M1Pro 14” 16/1TB Apple refurb (with full 1 yr warranty) from Woot for $1370 to replace my wife’s M1 mba 8/512gb model. Much better value than the 8gb base M3 model for $1599.

 

[tobybrut]

Oh, my bad. I could have sworn there was only M3 or M3 Pro in the 14" and no binned option. I will have to go back and check. Still even if it is the same as the previous gen you still aren't paying any more and getting the same specs with a newer, faster, chip with a better GPU. Only memory bandwidth is slightly less. Considering inflation and the fact that M3 has to cost more to produce than M2 seems like it is still a win.

There is one oddity I'll bet few people noticed. There is no binned M3. I wonder if there will be one when the MacBook Air is updated to M3, but it's the only one of the three processors introduced that has no binned version.

 

[ZebedeeG]

There is one oddity I'll bet few people noticed. There is no binned M3. I wonder if there will be one when the MacBook Air is updated to M3, but it's the only one of the three processors introduced that has no binned version.

Base iMac has 8 core GPU instead of 10 core CGU...

Though the CPU's the same.

 

[AriaAmaris]

Would be curious to see the base model sales versus the mod sales.

 

[robfoll]

You must be desperate for clickbait to run a story like this. 'Unverified' indeed! Shame on you!

 

[robfoll]

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

Why?

Because it's not a flop. How on earth do you get tho think that?

 

[Lerenard3000]

No Dynamic Island and no games =
no new Mac for me, iPhone 15 pro ultra powerful but AirPlay is too laggy to play games so what’s the point, aaa games need big screen, still no fall guys on native Apple systems… I want real games, just buy Nintendo already.

 

[chucker23n1]

So many responses going off the rails. Perhaps you missed the part of the article that says "This is only a single benchmark result." It very could well be that other stuff was going on while the benchmark was running, so the result can't be trusted. Someone at Apple might be having a laugh watching you all squirm over this.

The result looks plausible.

 

[Gudi]

Battery life is only something people here are bringing up as a post-hoc justification, it wasn't anything that apple advertised on, nor is it, nor was it, how the Pro SoC was advertised relative to the standard SoC. Yes battery life will probably be better, but, again, I doubt you complained about M1 Pro battery life, you're now here using it, only after, the announcement, to justify the decisions of Apple.

You might want to rewatch the keynote to make sure the "industry-leading power efficiency" wasn't mentioned along with "extraordinary battery life" and the "very small chip" being "ideal for laptops" whether "plugged-in or not". What actually wasn't mentioned during the presentation was M3 Pro cpu performance compared to M2 Pro. If you only care for maximum performance, then you should look at M3 Max. Because only one chip in the M3 family of chips was designed for performance above all else.

Johny Srouji: "We tailor each M3 series chip for different user needs"

 

[Substance90]

This whole line up screams rushed

On the contrary - the upsell tactics seem very well thought through to extract maximum gain from our crying wallets.

 

[Motorola68000]

Not true. TSMC jacked up the price of 3nm wafers by 25% over the cost of the previous 5nm process Apple was using on the M2 series. News stories had Apple rebelling against the enormous price increase, but they ended up sucking it up, seeing as TSMC is really the only game in town. Even Intel dropped their own fab processes to go with TSMC. The M3 Pro costs considerably more than the M2 Pro, even with fewer transistors. Yet they kept the price the same. With inflation, how does this increase margins, at least on the chip? We don’t know if they found cost savings elsewhere, but they certainly didn’t save any with their new SoC’s.

The main reason there are fewer transistors is because the chip was a complete redesign and e-cores need fewer transistors than p-cores. In prior M-series versions, you could see the pictures of the Pro and Max chips and you could tell the Pro chip was merely a Max chip with the bottom cut off where there would have been extra GPU cores since the Pro and Max had identical everything else. Now when you look at the pictures, they look nothing similar. Both chips are very different designs.

I agree that both chips are very different designs, which is what makes the whole 'storyline' superfluous. You can't possibly compare an M2 Pro against M3 Pro when the only thing common is the word pro. Apple designed the M2 pro for a reason, and I doubt it was cost, as changing the design would be costly. I think we need to wait and see a full rundown on performance, let alone rely on an unverified one. I am though critical of the 8Gb base RAM, and these days 512gb SSD 16Gb would have been more appropriate. I can live with the reduced SSD though because of the relative cheapness and performance improvement in external storage, so that's user changeable, the RAM is a different story.

 

[Motorola68000]

It’s also true the A17 Pro doubled in cost over the A16. The transistor count did not double while the yield was down to 60%. You’re forgetting yield. While the 5nm process was at 90% yield, the N3B process had horrendous yields. As a result the M3’s are going to cost a heck of a lot more than the M2’s. The costs will come down once they go to N3E, though transistor densities will suffer as a result. Remember that 3nm is just a name. It doesn’t actually mean the traces are 3nm in width. Some parts of the chip will be 3nm, but others will be 5nm, others will be 14nm, all on the same chip.

the yield data you quota is absolutely normal in new processes. The M2 was a low yield, and the yield curve always starts low and gets better as problems are resolved. So its unwise to use the yield as a definitive factor when the overall yields are no different to any others, because they too start off very low.

 

[killhippie]

I agree that both chips are very different designs, which is what makes the whole 'storyline' superfluous. You can't possibly compare an M2 Pro against M3 Pro when the only thing common is the word pro. Apple designed the M2 pro for a reason, and I doubt it was cost, as changing the design would be costly. I think we need to wait and see a full rundown on performance, let alone rely on an unverified one. I am though critical of the 8Gb base RAM, and these days 512gb SSD 16Gb would have been more appropriate. I can live with the reduced SSD though because of the relative cheapness and performance improvement in external storage, so that's user changeable, the RAM is a different story.

But with the M2 series like the mac Mini if you got 512GB the read and write speeds were slower by 3000Mbps over the 1TB, external cant make up for that sadly. I wonder if that tactic
going to happen in this generation of devices as well?

 

[killhippie]

Or maybe you desire to scroll more than 6% faster through your Insta feed, so you can hate yourself even more that you don’t have the imaginary life that’s being forced into you.

Apple should make a chip 100% faster, so you can doom scroll and really do your self esteem in. Like a good little consumer

Sounds you have watched to many episodes of Charlie Brookers Blackmirror.

 

[michelb76]

Lower memory bandwidth affecting overall performance?

Doubt it, this should not be noticeable unless you train LLM's or write a memory profiler. Or run a microbenchmark.

 

[throAU]

You know... except for the GPU/NPU/etc.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

No Dynamic Island and no games =
no new Mac for me, iPhone 15 pro ultra powerful but AirPlay is too laggy to play games so what’s the point, aaa games need big screen, still no fall guys on native Apple systems… I want real games, just buy Nintendo already.

Unfortunately, until Tim Sweeney changes his mind, you won't see Fall Guys on Apple systems again.

And Nintendo's traditionally Japanese. The chances of Apple being able to buy them are the same as my being able to buy them: zilch.

 

[johnhackworth]

Here’s an interesting fact for you all. Do you know what totally trashes the speed increase from the M2 to the M3 when browsing the web.

By absolute magnitudes. A lowly raspberry pi connected to your router, that acts as your DNS server. A simple lockup table that resolves all adverts and tracker domains to null.

And that lowly little chip in the raspberry PI will be like you’ve upgraded not just M2 to an M3, but to an M10 and beyond, and will do so for EVERY device connected to your network..

And it doesn’t even have gigabyte ethernet to achieve all of this. It has 100 Ethernet.

It’s like upgrading every single device you own. AND closing the curtains so the nosey gits outside can‘t stalk you.

Are you referring to a Pi-Hole?

 

[ProfessionalFan]

In case anyone was wondering why they barely showed comps between M3 and M2 especially with the Pro line.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

Here’s an interesting fact for you all. Do you know what totally trashes the speed increase from the M2 to the M3 when browsing the web.

By absolute magnitudes. A lowly raspberry pi connected to your router, that acts as your DNS server. A simple lockup table that resolves all adverts and tracker domains to null.

And that lowly little chip in the raspberry PI will be like you’ve upgraded not just M2 to an M3, but to an M10 and beyond, and will do so for EVERY device connected to your network..

And it doesn’t even have gigabyte ethernet to achieve all of this. It has 100 Ethernet.

It’s like upgrading every single device you own. AND closing the curtains so the nosey gits outside can‘t stalk you.

Pi-Hole is indeed great but you can get a similar effect from services like NextDNS if you don't want/have a Pi.