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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

#831

Post by OJFord »

_joel wrote: post #750
OJFord wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much RAM do you want to give the containers on your MacBook? I'm being facetious, but it's an unanswerable question.

However much you set on the slider, so not quite so unanswerable.

I mean the person I replied to asked the unanswerable question. How can we say how much memory they need in their computer 'for containers' without knowing where they want to set those sliders (and how many of them there are), and then it's not really worth asking, or it would be a question about runtime overhead or something.

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

#832

Post by davepeck »

mrcwinn wrote: post #793
paulpan wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new M3 14" MBP seems to be a red herring - why does it even exist? Why not just refresh the MBA instead? An obvious rule of thumb is for "Pro"-branded laptops to only use "Pro"-branded chips. It's what they follow for the iPhone lineup, but I suppose iPad Pros also use non-Pro chips. Just seems like a very confusing SKU to create, and definitely something Steve wouldn't approve of.

I personally struggle with the 14". It feels too small to be productive on, at least for coding. Anyone else experience this? And yet, the MBA's screen in comparison is serviceable and nice, but nothing outstanding. That's the case for the MBP 14 (when the 16 is just too large and bulky).

Absolutely love my 14” M2 pro and use it daily for coding. Perfect size/weight for the backpack, and endless battery at the local coffee shop.

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

#833

Post by kar1181 »

GoofballJones wrote: post #551
koito17 wrote: post #102

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 think this is squarely aimed at people who are holding onto their Intel-based Macs with an iron grip. There are always people out there that don't ever want to move to another architecture. I saw it going from Motorola 68030s to PowerPC. I saw people not wanting to upgrade from PowerPC to Intel. Now we're still seeing the people who don't want to migrate to Apple Silicon. They may have legit reasons and what-not. B…

Intel ride or die here. My 2019 i9 mbp is trucking along still - and this time of year the heat helps keep the room hospitable.

Was looking towards M3 for a big leap, but apart from heat and power (I use my MBP plugged in 95% of the time) there still isn't that compelling a reason to deal with some of the issues (thunderbolt / multiple displays) for my use case.

At 4 grand (sterling!) for comparable spec to my intel mbp, I just can't bring myself to take a plunge.

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

#834

Post by philistine »

stouset wrote: post #584
kimixa wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't if the M3 turns out to be a significant upgrade.

That’s honestly just not how Apple hardware resale value has ever worked. The new M3 hardware could double the performance of the previous generation and they would only drop in price by maybe a few hundred.

One big outlier; the recent Intel Macs have dropped far more in value than expected.

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

#835

Post by someonehere »

I really hope Apple doesn’t do a yearly cadence with new chips. From all the comments I’m reading here there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstandings about why new chips that seem to underperform or lackluster performance. Maybe Apple should just do every other year for chip upgrades.

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

#836

Post by superkuh »

smrtinsert wrote: post #805
superkuh wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just hope they stop selling 8GB variants entirely. All those do is make job security for tech support people.

Completely disagree. Happily run Intellij with various containers doing dev work on my 8gb m1.

Yes, you're a tech person. I mean when non-tech people run them and try to use them for Adobe Suite and a browser at the same time, etc.

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

#837

Post by ksec »

latchkey wrote: post #255
andrewprock wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using a 2015 macbook for my personal daily driver. I have to plug it in regularly, but otherwise it works just fine for everything except video editing.

Any reason for not upgrading?

Not OP, but

The new Magic Keyboard ( or Scissor 2.0 ) just doesn't suites me. 1.0mm Key travel is so so much worse than the 1.3/1.5mm old scissors on my 2015 MBP.

I actually dont need the seamless, ultra large trackpad. Which gets false positive from time to time. This has never been the case on a sane trackpad size.

My Workload is memory limited, and rarely CPU limited. Upgrading wouldn't bring a lot of benefits unless I have more memory, and Memory upgrade is expensive.

Did I mention keyboard or trackpad?

I just had a battery swap on this MBP earlier this year, hopefully it will last another 4 - 5 years or whenever I cant update Safari. Although I guess I could still use Firefox.

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

#838

Post by ncr100 »

shusaku wrote: post #614
vessenes wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just hurting yourself. Even the M1 Pro is like 3x faster than that Intel laptop. Plus so many tiny things like sleep/wake, power management, heat.. I really can't stress enough what a tectonic change the M1 was over Intel.

But how will I ever survive without my touchbar?

Maybe an aftermarket keyboard? I know you're not serious but aftermarket keyboards some of them have little OLED inside the keys. Also somehow the Apple vision Pro headset might provide you with that one extra awkward step needed to accomplish a task interface that it seems like you might be humorously craving.

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

#840

Post by polishTar »

ricardobeat wrote: post #765
polishTar wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The new efficiency cores are 30% faster than M2, and the performance ones 20% faster, so lets do the math: M2: 8 + 4 M3: 6*1.2 + 6*1.3 = 7.2 + 7.8 That’s nearly double the M2’s efficiency cores, a little less on the performance ones. They do say the system overall is up to 65% faster, and has lower power consumption at the same performance level.

You're not considering the difference in performance between the p and e cores. The math should be something more like:

  M2 pro = 8*3 + 4 =28 (the *3 representing that the performance cores contribute ~3x more to total system performance than the efficiency cores)

  M3 pro = 6*3*1.15 + 6*1.3 =28 (apple claims 15% more performance for the p cores not 20%)
> They do say the system overall is up to 65% faster, and has lower power consumption at the same performance level.

They don't claim either of those things. They claim the performance is 20% faster than the M1 pro. Interestingly, they made that exact same claim when they announced the M2 pro.

Energy efficiency might be better, but I'm skeptical till I see tests. I suspect at least some of the performance gains on the p+e cores are driven by running at higher clock rates and less efficiently. That may end up being more significant to total energy consumption than the change in the mix of p/e cores. To put it another way, they have more e cores, but their new e cores may be less efficient due to higher clock speeds. Total energy efficiency could go down. We'll just have to wait and see but given that apple isn't claiming an increase in battery life for the M3 pro products compared to their M2 pro counterparts, I don't think we should expect an improvement.

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