Performance Comparison: M3 Max MacBook Pro vs. M1 Max MacBook Pro

[Gloor]

Yes, thats exactly what I would do. In fact, thats what I used to do when I was a student.
I let the machine run overnight to spit out the final render. As I would do this once every quarter (for the semester's work) it was fine. Also, back then it was all cpu renders.
Anyway, every noob can do final cut export but youtube is full of it. Try to find anything for Maya (industry standard software) and you will find out almost nothing.

Just goes to show that these guys know nothing

Perhaps, but... why would you render anything like that with a laptop (multiple days for a 30 second clip)? A $500 GPU would outperform an M3 Max ($4000+) any day. Are you really going to set your brand new laptop in a corner and let the fans churn for days on end? Are you going to do this regularly? A student/freelancer could buy a reasonably priced laptop AND a desktop for that price, and come out way ahead. An MBP is nice, but it's not the right tool for that job.

Exporting a video is a much more reasonable scenario, and the difference in that is much less significant in that use case. It's not like you can't do anything else while a video is exporting unless you're lazy like me, in which case the slower the better!

 

[Gloor]

Yeah, personally I've stopped watching him or anyone that does clickbaits.
If you can't be professional about a thumbnail then you are hardly going to be professional about the content. I really wish that youtube would implement some form of 'refund' so when I watch a video and I realise it was a clickbait, I would request a 'refunded' view.
Perhaps that way the content on the youtube would improve as people would be 'voting' with their wallets

I’ve taken to downvoting and leaving a comment saying so on his videos. Can’t stand his hypercaffeinated performance that constantly seems he’s on the verge of laughing all the time.

The clickbait isn’t just him either. I’ve seen a few videos with vague in screen captions like “Apple are finished” or “It’s over”… or... “why I returned my iPhone!” before going on to praise it anyway.

 

[Icehawk]

I was debating if I should wait one more gen, but my mid 2014 MBP's motherboard is slowly going. 308% and 610% is a huge increase for me, and if more numbers come in and its a little lower, it's still huge.

 

[CarAnalogy]

It probably didn’t help that the MacBook isn’t really black but grey lol

I don’t know what happened to Apple this year, it’s like their supplier ran out of dye.

 

[Ethosik]

Max Tech compared the M3 Pro MacBook Pro to the M2 Pro MacBook Pro and the results were surprising. Geekbench tests don’t tell the whole story. Suffice to say the M3 Pro MacBook Pro did quite well and under certain use cases it is indeed worth considering the upgrade.

This is why benchmark applications are ridiculous. Show usage in apps. Not how well a computer runs Geekbench.

 

[MrGimper]

This is why benchmark applications are ridiculous. Show usage in apps. Not how well a computer runs Geekbench.

People get too fixated with benchmark results.

I recall when I bought my 2019 i9 I was going to get the 2.4 but when I looked at the actual tests the 2.3 was only only slightly slower in real-world but quite a bit on geekbench.

However dropping from the 2.4 to the 2.3 allowed me to double the RAM from 32 to 64 for the same machine price.

 

[mtbdudex]

I’m in to buying these M3 machines.. Pro or Max 🤷‍♂️

2023 MacBook Pro, which M3 chip? Currently 2015 iMac with 4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 (with a 3TB Hybrid drive)

Apple M3 Pro chip with 12‑core CPU, 18‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
or
Apple M3 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine

I love the fact getting 8 years usage from the 2015 iMac, actually on it now.
Looking to getting 7-8 years usage from this M3 MacBook Pro as well.


If I get the M3 Pro chip I'd mid-spec it for $3.2k USD
M3 Pro chip with 12‑core CPU, 18‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine, 36GB unified memory, 2TB SSD
while the M3 Max Chip I'd nearly full spec it at $4.9k USD
M3 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine, 64GB unified memory, 4TB SSD

My usage;
Photo-hobbyist, besides landscape, other my main is astro-photography & processing 1,000's images for timelapse/other, making videos, etc.
FWIW have a 4-bay Synology NAS_DS920 , 10TB RAID & 6TB backup to the RAID also connected via Cat5e for TimeMachine backup.
Not that it matters, but I'm 61 now, retiring in 1-2 years,this will then be my laptop as we travel the country in our camper.

With the M3 Pro Chip as I config it I can add the lovely 27" Apple studio display for nearly the same as the M3 Max config....

 

[woolypants]

I was debating if I should wait one more gen, but my mid 2014 MBP's motherboard is slowly going. 308% and 610% is a huge increase for me, and if more numbers come in and its a little lower, it's still huge.

Buyer's remorse with Apple is obviously comically prevalent. There are even memes about it. There's NEVER a good time to buy, and the most happiness you can get nowadays knowing you have the latest and greatest is about six months. Even people buying the M3 Max MacBook Pros right now only have a few months until Apple almost certainly launches M3 Ultra desktops early next year, which will make their "scary fast" chips look a little less scary.

If I were you I'd just look out for a refurb or even second-hand lightly-used M1 Max or M2 Max. You're going to get a very good machine at an almost reasonable price (although still likely insanely high compared to any other laptop on the planet). Just make sure you get the 1TB SSD model for the fast access speeds.

 

[daneoni]

Disagree that a 50% improvement in speed does not seem like true value. What is your basis of comparison to state that? If you are web browsing, not going to notice. Exporting an 8K movie from a Canon R5, you are going to notice a massive difference. Using blender on a movie, a 70% reduction in processing is massive.

Has everyone gotten punch drunk? I remember when Intel-based upgrades on processors were adding 5% to 12% in performance and all the pundits were pleased. Apple changes direction with its chips and suddenly if it is not a 50% increase or 100% increase in performance, it is not worth it? NVidia releases a new GPU with 25% increase in render speed and people are ecstatic, Apple releases M3 Max and you all go “ho-hum”, such a waste, I will wait until the M9 chip when I get a decent upgrade.

Consider the value of your time. For a professional editing run, we value our time at $250 to $400 per hour billable to the client. Exporting a video clip that normally takes 5.5 hours or more and it takes 1 hour 40 minutes provides an opportunity cost of ($400*5.5) - ($400*1.65) = $400 * 3.85 = $1,540. At $250 it is opportunity cost savings on $962.50.

Certainly there is slip in the numbers, let’s assume 40%. So opportunity savings are only $924 per run. With the $250 rate the savings are only $577.50. Only …. Assuming a $5,099 cost for a machine, certainly a lot of money I admit, the new machine is paid for in 5.52 client projects at $400 and at $250 per hour it is 8.83 client projects.

That is how people and companies justify new machines. Time has value.


I would upgrade if it took 15 client jobs to be honest.

As i alluded to in the original post. If your workflow exploits the all the added performance then great. If you spend your days in Cinema 4D, Blender, etc Or are shifting 8K regularly and/or regularly do critical turnaround times then great. Have at it.

If you mostly deal with 4K, some light graphical work, and already have an M-series chip. I'm not sure there's as much incentive.

 

[Timpetus]

Buyer's remorse with Apple is obviously comically prevalent. There are even memes about it. There's NEVER a good time to buy, and the most happiness you can get nowadays knowing you have the latest and greatest is about six months. Even people buying the M3 Max MacBook Pros right now only have a few months until Apple almost certainly launches M3 Ultra desktops early next year, which will make their "scary fast" chips look a little less scary.

If I were you I'd just look out for a refurb or even second-hand lightly-used M1 Max or M2 Max. You're going to get a very good machine at an almost reasonable price (although still likely insanely high compared to any other laptop on the planet). Just make sure you get the 1TB SSD model for the fast access speeds.

There are great deals from B&H right now on both 14" and 16" M1 Max models with 64GB RAM and 2 or 4 TB SSDs. I myself purchased the 14" model when it was on sale a couple months ago, it's down to the same price now ($2500). Great machine, I'm very happy with it!

 

[richinaus]

As i alluded to in the original post. If your workflow exploits the all the added performance then great. If you spend your days in Cinema 4D, Blender, etc Or are shifting 8K regularly and/or regularly do critical turnaround times then great. Have at it.

If you mostly deal with 4K, some light graphical work, and already have an M-series chip. I'm not sure there's as much incentive.

I will just buy the M3 once all the software settles and is updated to make use of the RT cores and will test it myself as usual. None of these reviews ever cover my workflow.

 

[JungleNYC]

From watching the introduction a couple weeks ago, they were really hammering on the whole theme of “Intel Mac users, time to upgrade!”. I got a very strong hint that Intel support goes away in the next major Mac OS version.

I agree that unless someone is really pushing the limits of existing Apple silicon hardware (maybe looking to upgrade product tiers because of that), the M3 MBP’s are a pretty incremental upgrade from the end-user standpoint.

Is there any chance the "legacy cycles" will increase w/ Apple silicone? It would be nice *not* to have a $3k machine become moot after 5 years.

 

[mecloud]

Is there any chance the "legacy cycles" will increase w/ Apple silicone? It would be nice *not* to have a $3k machine become moot after 5 years.

Without insider knowledge, all we have to go on is history:

1984: First Motorola 680X0 Mac is released

1994: First PowerPC Macs are released

2006: First Intel Macs are released

2020: First ARM/Apple Macs are released

Plus there’s typically been several years of ongoing Mac OS updates supporting the previous hardware after each of those transitions.

Main concern is buying enough horsepower/RAM/SSD for projected needs over the next few years, unless you habitually change computers very often. Do consider that memory/storage requirements almost always head in one direction over time. I’m trying to remember if *any* major Mac OS update ever had *lower* RAM/storage footprints than the previous one…

 

[ksj1]

As i alluded to in the original post. If your workflow exploits the all the added performance then great. If you spend your days in Cinema 4D, Blender, etc Or are shifting 8K regularly and/or regularly do critical turnaround times then great. Have at it.

If you mostly deal with 4K, some light graphical work, and already have an M-series chip. I'm not sure there's as much incentive.

There are other use cases. My M1 Max is very fast compared to the 2018 i9 I had, but saving 30% of the time it takes to run unit tests and compile is pretty significant for my workflow.

 

[mecloud]

If it was a software bug, why not just reinstall the OS from a clean SSD? Which “black screen” bug are you referring to anyway?

This thread chronicles my experiences (originally I had no idea any software bug was involved, and neither did any of the respondents):

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-16-inch-macbook-pro-failure-after-18-months.2407971/

The issue (eventually affecting a total of five MacBook Pros, including four brand new M2 Pro units) turned out to be this:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-max-black-screen-at-boot-after-updating-ventura-13-6.2405267/

In that “bricked” state, there was no normal “recovery” options. There was no ability to boot at all. The only option was to use DFU mode, which did not always work on the affected computers. I spent an enormous amount of time on all of this.

 

[Flabasha]

Even pro users don’t often hit peak performance.
It is more valuable to have a snappy machine during productivity (e.g a fast 3D viewport with decent rendering in Blender, a snappy FCPX timeline) compared to a final render.
Final renders don’t happy often. Usually you rely on a proxy quality when authoring content and only at the end you do an actual render.
Only when you play games, you want sustained, trustworthy (GPU) performance. However: Mac 🤷🏻‍♂️

Which makes the new M3 less attractive for existing Apple Silicon users.

True, but as a Daz3D user, I wonder what the viewport redraw speed improvements are over my M1Max 2021.

 

[pappl]

As long as AAA-gaming on Mac is not present, people will ask themselves why upgrade to M3 and will stay with M1 Macs (like MKBHD) or choose AMD/nVidia systems.

 

[ric22]

Mostly a really good video, but it's a bit weird to compare battery life on two videos when one laptop has a colourful desktop image on screen and the other has a 99% black desktop image on screen. Which display will draw more energy I wonder? 🤔

 

[mtbdudex]

Without insider knowledge, all we have to go on is history:

1984: First Motorola 680X0 Mac is released

1994: First PowerPC Macs are released

2006: First Intel Macs are released

2020: First ARM/Apple Macs are released

Plus there’s typically been several years of ongoing Mac OS updates supporting the previous hardware after each of those transitions.

Main concern is buying enough horsepower/RAM/SSD for projected needs over the next few years, unless you habitually change computers very often. Do consider that memory/storage requirements almost always head in one direction over time. I’m trying to remember if *any* major Mac OS update ever had *lower* RAM/storage footprints than the previous one…

History lane, among my many purchases over 39 years:
1984: First Motorola 680X0 Mac is released
>>Owned the 128k Mac Sept-1984, MacPortable 1990, PowerBook 180 1993

1994: First PowerPC Macs are released
>>Power Macintosh G3 1997

 

[Fomalhaut]

If it was a software bug, why not just reinstall the OS from a clean SSD? Which “black screen” bug are you referring to anyway?

@foliovision why the downvote to my question? If the poster said their issue was not hardware related, then buying a new computer seems to be overkill for a problem that should be resolved by a clean installation of macOS, no?

I am also interested in learning more about the “black screen” bug that what mentioned.

Asking a question should never generate a “dislike” on a forum!

 

[Fomalhaut]

wow you can export a few min quicker. how does that make people think its worth it

If those minutes are paying you big bucks, then it can be worth it. I saw a post where they calculated that in 8-15 client jobs they would have paid for the entire cost of the new M3 machine by gains in work throughput.

For everyone else, the time saving is probably just a minor improvement that makes using the machine a little bit easier or less frustrating.

 

[krakenrelease]

The numbers look impressive but 2 mins real-world gains...factoring the cost does not seem like true value.

Again if you're coming from Intel then by all means. But if you already have an M series chip then really there's less incentive

Unless you have an esoteric workflow thats takes advantage of every minutae of performance gain

...or just have have disposable income.

Or want it in black 🤣

 

[Unregistered 4U]

At apples pricing they are not brining many over to their side. Sadly. When you can buy a $500 laptop that will last six years with windows and do everything you need it to do. Apple has an uphill battle with adoption rates.

They don’t need to bring many to their side. They’re currently profitable with the Mac even with a year on year 34% drop in Mac sales. In a given year, as half the Macs sold are to folks that have never used a Mac before, they only need 10 million to add to the 10 million upgrades and that’s all they need.

It’s not even an uphill battle to sell half the Macs they sell to new users. At this point, it’s more of a leisurely walk along a flat featureless plain.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Unless production yields improve, that might still be a while off for M3 or they may wait for M4.

I don’t know, it’s not like they’d plan to sell, more than 500-1,000 Ultras in a year. As long as they’re not all on the same day, even bad yields would cover that.

 

[spcopsmac21]

They don’t need to bring many to their side. They’re currently profitable with the Mac even with a year on year 34% drop in Mac sales. In a given year, as half the Macs sold are to folks that have never used a Mac before, they only need 10 million to add to the 10 million upgrades and that’s all they need.

It’s not even an uphill battle to sell half the Macs they sell to new users. At this point, it’s more of a leisurely walk along a flat featureless plain.

Except now people are not upgrading from M1 to M2 or M3. Staying longer on the M1.