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M3 Pro Chip Barely Faster Than M2 Pro in Unverified Benchmark Result
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It's thinking like this at Intel which lead to them being in their current predicament.
How is this a bad thing? I’d say Apple will be forced to evolve faster to keep their market lead - consumers win either way with better choices all around.
TLDR : Apple fixed the Apple Silicon lineup.
Between a Max and a Pro chip, there was close to no CPU difference. Now there is. It sucks for the M3 line, but it should have been like that from the very beginning.
Let's put it in another perspective : The base M3 chip is very close to my base M2 Pro chip in multi-core, but it is faster in single-core...
Between a Max and a Pro chip, there was close to no CPU difference. Now there is. It sucks for the M3 line, but it should have been like that from the very beginning.
Let's put it in another perspective : The base M3 chip is very close to my base M2 Pro chip in multi-core, but it is faster in single-core...
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Appreciate how Vadim Yuryev at Max Tech always is trying to give us tech information first, so that people can make make the best decisions on purchasing, and deciding between, Apple products for themselves!
Apple is still a really nice company that cares about their products, and I think Tim is a great guy who wants the best for the company and customers.
But situations like this just seem a bit odd.
It’s like they are always playing catch up, always having to reorganize and clear up their lineups every few years. It feels a bit messy and unfocused.
How many decades can you be making laptops and still not figure out an optimal lineup that caters to a broad range of uses. What is their market research department doing?
Apple silicon is theirs and the have so much control. Yet the Mac Pro uses a SoC that limits it in so many ways. They need SoC for some macs and a different design for the higher end for scalability and upgradability.
But situations like this just seem a bit odd.
It’s like they are always playing catch up, always having to reorganize and clear up their lineups every few years. It feels a bit messy and unfocused.
How many decades can you be making laptops and still not figure out an optimal lineup that caters to a broad range of uses. What is their market research department doing?
Apple silicon is theirs and the have so much control. Yet the Mac Pro uses a SoC that limits it in so many ways. They need SoC for some macs and a different design for the higher end for scalability and upgradability.
Intel generational shift is usually 10-20% so that's within margin of error. Saying to not upgrade systems due to not enough performance improvement leads to long-in-the-tooth product lines. Customers only buy shiny, not old.
You sure about that? The M3 Geekbench multicore score was 11,700 while the M3 Pro’s was 15,173, a difference of 30%. That’s a pretty big difference in CPU scores. Now look at the GPU. The M3 has 10 GPU cores and the M3 Pro 18. Since GPU cores scale almost one-to-one, that means the GPU is just under 80% faster than the M3. The M3 Pro is solidly faster than the M3, just as the M3 Max is solidly faster than the M3 Pro by about 39% with the M3 Max Geekbench score at 21,084. Maybe Apple picked the number of cores specifically to place the M3 Pro almost exactly halfway between the M3 and the M3 Max, again evidence Apple wanted to segment the current M3 line into three distinct slots, M3 Ultra TBD.
Businesses are on their own schedule, but the average consumer upgrades their laptop (MacBook or otherwise) about every 5+ years, not two or three.
I'm not even going to look at upgrading for my M1 Air until at least the M5. I kept 2012 non-retina MBP for almost nine years.
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This is where you see the best comparisons between performance. Macs can last a very long time. My Mac mini (Intel) I bought during 2020 refresh I’m hoping will last me until 2026 at least. My M2 MacBook Air… about 2027 at least.
Macs have a reputation for running a long time. They are engineered and made very well. Most customers are keeping macs a lot longer than most of the crowd on here.
Well the fact the M3 Pro is still considerably faster in single core scores and faster, albeit much less so in multi-core scores is still great. The GPU appears to be a significant upgrade which we will soon be able to confirm with real world work.
Part of the problem I think is perception. Many of us were under the assumption that M3 and A17 (Pro) was going to be significantly faster and more efficient since they are on 3nm process. So far that hasn’t turned out to be the case with the A17 Pro, and maybe isn’t the case with the M3 Pro, but both still added gains to already impressively powerful chips.
Part of the problem I think is perception. Many of us were under the assumption that M3 and A17 (Pro) was going to be significantly faster and more efficient since they are on 3nm process. So far that hasn’t turned out to be the case with the A17 Pro, and maybe isn’t the case with the M3 Pro, but both still added gains to already impressively powerful chips.
Because AMD showed just how bad Intel was struggling with process node advances and IPC gains and was basically just shuffling the deck chairs from Skylake through to Coffee Lake all the time telling us how good Ice Lake would be while pushing back release dates. Now Intel seems to be falling back into that old habit while trying to rename fab processes and CPU naming conventions to confuse people while they pull back on advancing. Wasn’t it Intel that bailed on TSMC 3nm and then Apple snatched up all that available manufacturing for their chips?
Apple’s not getting a pass, but good grief, they’re 3 iterations in on desktops SoCs and Intel is at what? FOURTEEN?!?!
M3 isn’t a flop at all. It may not be what people were hyping it up to be six months ago (which is now happening with M4), but it’s working out to be a solid update in most regards. Tech knit pickers are always going to knit pick, because that’s what they get paid to do. Tech enthusiasts are going to knit pick because they don’t know any better but want to show they do.
Each and every tech company has hits and misses, times when they can do no wrong and time when they can’t do anything right, no matter the real story. Use your critical thinking skills (if you have them) to pick through the BS. Apple isn’t infallible and neither is Intel, AMD or *gasp* NVIDIA.
Um. This does precisely that.
You got the very low end with the M1 MBAir at $999, then the M2 MBAir in two sizes at $1,099 and $1,299, then the M3 MBPro at $1,599, then the M3 Pro MBPro at $1,999, or $2,499 with 16 inches, and finally the Max at $3,199.
How is that not a broad range?
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.
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.
Yep, the amount of projecting around here is astonishing at times.
AMD is more efficient than Intel.
Apple’s strategy is easy to understand and makes sense. Widely used by Intel for many years.
M1: Tick. New arch. Two chip designs, M1 and M1 Max. Pro is cut down Max.
M2: Tock. Arch improvements.
M3: Tick. Die shrink (3nm) plus new chip design (Pro).
M4: Tock. Here comes arch improvements for roughly 15% gain across the lineup. Derived from A18.
M5: Tick. Launches on 2 nm.
Geez.
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.
And it took them three years to make this lineup??
The cycle will repeat again I’m sure. Discontinue and then reintroduce… you do remember they discontinued the MacBook line twice?
The irony of these debates is that no one is talking about the M3 family’s GPUs. The “M3 better have ray-tracing or else” mob has been deafeningly silent ever since the Scary Fast announcement. I suspect those are the same NVIDIA acolytes who spend their time on other chat boards crowing about ray-tracing and justifying spending $2,500 on a 4090 instead of fixing the transmission on their cars.
The griping about P versus E, single-core versus multi-core without anyone having an M3 in their hot little mitts to see how it is real world tells me that people around here need to actually get a life and a job that actually requires that sort of introspection. Pretty much 95% of people here are just fine with an M1 Air, if that.
The griping about P versus E, single-core versus multi-core without anyone having an M3 in their hot little mitts to see how it is real world tells me that people around here need to actually get a life and a job that actually requires that sort of introspection. Pretty much 95% of people here are just fine with an M1 Air, if that.
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...
You do you then. Nothing about Apple releasing new chips every 18 months would impact you.