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Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

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Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#191
post #175
post #139

It's shiny but I think I'll stick to my upgradable RAM and two m2 slots + a RTX 3070ti and i7-12700H for a fraction of the price. Something at Apple broke when they switched to their own silicon outside iPad and iPhone. They turned around the slow march toward parity on price:performance/RAM/storage and went screaming in the other direction. I really wanted to switch to mac when I was shopping for a new system earlie…

Would be interested in a link to a model if you have one handy!

[deleted]

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#192
post #139

It's shiny but I think I'll stick to my upgradable RAM and two m2 slots + a RTX 3070ti and i7-12700H for a fraction of the price. Something at Apple broke when they switched to their own silicon outside iPad and iPhone. They turned around the slow march toward parity on price:performance/RAM/storage and went screaming in the other direction. I really wanted to switch to mac when I was shopping for a new system earlie…

I tried to find a laptop with the specification you just mentioned that could last 20 hours on battery. Didn’t.

What job do you have that requires you to work non stop for 20 hours away from a wall socket? I understand the need for autonomy but there are diminishing returns. It's ok to start looking at other decision factors past a certain point.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to find a laptop with the specification you just mentioned that could last 20 hours on battery. Didn’t.

I'm personally always near a wall socket. My laptop is mostly a desktop. When I'm out and need to use the battery, it's only for a few hours. Do people really need >8h battery life?

I’ve never taken my charger to work with me. It was an odd experience the first week. I’ll never go back to plugs.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#194
post #26

What's with the 36 GB option? The other memory configs (16 GB, 64 GB) are still clean powers of two. Size suggests that they're using ECC-capable memory but using the extra width intended to support ECC for data... but why would this only apply to a single size? Part availability? EDIT: Digging this a bit, it's not (one or more) 72-bit wide busses with 2^32 words as I'd expect as a gray-beard, it's (probably) six 32-…

64 GB chips that failed testing? That's one way to increase yield. Clive Sinclair did that trick back in the 80s.

Uncle Clive.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#195
post #160

A few things I noticed, as I'm seeing the variety of SKUs becoming more complex. - Note that memory bandwidth is down. M2 Pro had 200GB/s, M3 Pro only has 150GB/s. M3 Max only has 400GB/s on the higher binned part. - Just like the low-spec M3 14" has one fewer Thunderbolt port, it also doesn't officially support Thunderbolt 4 (like M1/M2 before it) - The M3 Pro loses the option for an 8TB SSD. Likely because it was a…

In addition to the reduced memory bandwidth, the M3 pro also loses 2 performance cores for only 2 more efficiency cores.

M2 pro: 8 performance cores + 4 efficiency cores.

M3 pro: 6 performance cores + 6 efficiency cores.

Not a great trade... I'm not sure the M3 pro can be considered an upgrade

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#196

One thing that left me a bit confused was the comparison against Intel Macs. Although I am still using an Intel 16-inch MacBook, I really wanted to see how the M3 fared against the M2, not Intel and M1. I think it's no surprise the M3 exceeds the Intel Core i7-9750H in basically all of Apple's own benchmarking. My real question, which will probably be answered next week, is how it compares to the generation right bef…

I imagine the amount of people upgrading from an M2 Mac will be close to 0, while there's a lot of Intel stragglers out there.

I think the point is more that "is it worth buying this new m3 or should I buy a secondhand m2 for half the price?"

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#198

One thing that left me a bit confused was the comparison against Intel Macs. Although I am still using an Intel 16-inch MacBook, I really wanted to see how the M3 fared against the M2, not Intel and M1. I think it's no surprise the M3 exceeds the Intel Core i7-9750H in basically all of Apple's own benchmarking. My real question, which will probably be answered next week, is how it compares to the generation right bef…

Not just that, but if you're not running ARM images then it's running a VM for your docker images to boot. It's just mind-blowing how many containers I have running and my laptop is cool to the touch, and at full battery.

Do note that cool to the touch is a bad thing if the internals are otherwise hot

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#200

One thing that left me a bit confused was the comparison against Intel Macs. Although I am still using an Intel 16-inch MacBook, I really wanted to see how the M3 fared against the M2, not Intel and M1. I think it's no surprise the M3 exceeds the Intel Core i7-9750H in basically all of Apple's own benchmarking. My real question, which will probably be answered next week, is how it compares to the generation right bef…

Not just that, but if you're not running ARM images then it's running a VM for your docker images to boot. It's just mind-blowing how many containers I have running and my laptop is cool to the touch, and at full battery.

This isn't as much the case anymore. There are typically arm64 images available for the more popular images, and anything you build locally is native, unless you're trying to build x86 software.

Redis, Memcached, PostgreSQL, MySQL- it's all native arm64 images now.

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