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New MacBook Pro Reviews: Scary Fast, But M3 Pro Chip Has a Catch

VisceralRealist said:
M3 Pro is a disappointment. The "middle option" doesn't seem as appealing anymore. If they can get a 20% CPU performance improvement out of M3 and 50% out of the Max, then only 6% for the Pro is inexcusable.
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Can't say that I've read the reviews from cover to cover yet, but they all seem to be looking at the M3 Max and regular M3. MR are just re-hashing the unverified "6%" claim from Max Tech - and even if that turns out to be accurate, real people don't buy MacBooks to run Geekbench - real-world performance on graphics, video and 3D will be important and the battery life under load could be a critical difference between the Pro and Max, since the big change is re-balancing the mix of economy and performance cores. Then there's other things like the extra TB4 port and support for 2 external displays that also distinguish the M3 Pro from the plain M3. Wrt. the M1 Pro/M2 Pro they've even bumped the base RAM up from 16 to 18GB without sticking $200 on the price (who are you and what have you done with the real Tim Cook?)

Anyway, apart from a relative handful of cash-splurging customers, the #1 target market for the M3 Macs is not people who bought an M2 in the last 10 months - its mainly going to be people upgrading from Intel Macs or who bought regular M1 Macs before the Pro chips appeared.
 
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MacBird said:
I bought the 16'' M1 Max with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 32 GPU cores when it was released and I think I paid about $3200. A similar M3 Max model costs over $3700.

The M1 Max is still plenty fast for what I do, and I don't even consider a new MBP at the moment.
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This is essentially where I'm at too, although my 16" M1 Max was configured with 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. (I was trying to future-proof it with plans I'd be keeping it a long time.)

I'd like the M3 Max only for the fact it should have even longer battery life and better GPU performance for gaming. But those two things don't come close to being important enough to justify how much it would cost me to upgrade right now.
 
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jgbr said:
M1 PRO and M2 PRO users looking pretty smug right now with quite a good value for money machine.....
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I have a base M1 Pro both 14 and 16”. Both with less than 50 cycles. Any reason for me to upgrade ?
 
Are there really zero M3 Pro reviews out today? All the reviews I can find are for the M3 Max. Typical tactics from Tim.
 
Populus said:
The M3 MacBook Pro would be a good upgrade. Even without the space black finish.
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I'm actually looking at the base 16" M3 Max/36GB/512GB in black, it will be $197/month after trade-in + applecare which isnt too bad but I am currently in the middle of a project so moving to macOS 14.1 might mess with my RAID.
 
The new M3 Pro is a decent upgrade, in my opinion (6% faster than an already very fast chip in less than a year is OK). The problem is when you compare it with the M2 Max > M3 Max upgrade, which is mind-blowing. Then we set ourselves up for disappointment with the M3 Pro (with a little help from Apple and their "Scary fast" marketing).
I come from an M1 Air and I want a bigger, better screen and better speakers (so the Air 15" won't do) and slightly better performance. I ordered an M3 Pro 16" 18gb/1tb right after the event and it will arrive in 3 days. Happy with my purchase and, if battery life really is that much better than my M1 Air's, then I will be even happier. For my use case, needs and wants, that is the right choice for me and I haven't made a bad purchase just because the jump from M2 Pro is not as significant as in the Max. A bad purchase would be spending $800 extra for a chip that I don't need.
PS. And no, I don't want to buy a discounted M1/M2 Pro, because I need to customize my keyboard.
 
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Just to clarify: shrinking to smaller structures doesn’t increase the speed at all. It’s a strange myth people keep reproducing.

What it allows is a potential decrease in energy consumption, which in turn allows for a higher clock speed.

But that’s not necessarily always the case, because sometimes the voltage need to be increased to sustain a chip working. (that’s often the case with a new process. Like TCMS 3nm…)
 
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ChibaCityBlues said:
Just to clarify: shrinking to smaller structures doesn’t increase the speed at all. It’s a strange myth people keep reproducing.
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Yeah if you build the same CPU using normal big transistors from electronics shop it will be of the same performance.
/sarcasm
 
M3 max seems very tempting but I’m riding my M1 Max until thunderbolt 5 arrives. Nice to see Apple aboard the 3 nanometer express m3 max is impressive with the additional cores and low power consumption.
 
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will mac studio/mac mini be updated with m3 anytime soon? seems odd mac studio only got updated few months ago with m2
 
VisceralRealist said:
M3 and M3 Max are significant leaps forward.

M3 Pro is a disappointment. The "middle option" doesn't seem as appealing anymore. If they can get a 20% CPU performance improvement out of M3 and 50% out of the Max, then only 6% for the Pro is inexcusable. The Pro shouldn't be the "ugly stepchild" that makes you go for the Max. Prior to M3, it was a significant improvement over the base chip and was a true "middle of the road" option. It doesn't seem to be anymore.
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get's you dual monitor support...I don't need the horsepower, but I need that.
 
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The significant reduction in memory bandwidth for the M3 Pro as compared to the M1 and M2 Pros reminds me of when Apple replaced the Mac IIci (25 Mhz 68030) with the IIvx (33 Mhz 68030) in the fall of 1992. At a glance, the IIvx seemed like a decent upgrade to the IIci, especially given the lower price. Then it turned out that Apple had hobbled the real-world performance of the IIvx by making the system bus half the CPU speed, while the IIci’s system bus was the same speed as its CPU.

That’s not the only such example in Apple’s history, but this one illustrates that it was a game they were playing long long ago.
 
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