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First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

extremetech.com

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Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#21

Post by WoodenChair »

ajross wrote: post #12

Live by benchmark results and slick performance marketing, die by benchmark results and slick performance marketing. The market is ruthless; if you aren't delivering more of what you promised made you great last year, you're failing. Really the underlying news here, which the article doesn't really treat with, is that TSMC's 3nm node is sort of a bust. It's not looking like a full node upgrade at all (something that'…

> They still have a comfortable lead over Intel, but scaling limitations come for us all eventually.

We’ll see if that holds. Intel claims they are on track to launch “Intel 20A” in 2024. [0]

0: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-displays-arrow-lake-...

Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#22

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

bloopernova wrote: post #20

I wonder what kind of usage metrics Apple has that led it to reduce (8 down to 6) the number of performance cores and increase (4 up to 6) the number of efficiency cores on the M3 Pro? Or the reduction (25%) in memory bandwidth? Maybe they're trying to get people to buy the Max version? The spec differences are interesting: M3 Pro, 6 efficiency, 6 performance, 18 GPU, 16 Neural cores, 150GB/s memory bandwidth M3 Max…

Way outside of my field of knowledge but would it be around prioritizing battery life above all else on the pro? Would also nudge people who _need_ the higher power features to not stick with Pro too, obviously.

Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#23

Post by spandrew »

davnicwil wrote: post #15

Seems to be based on the perspective that the focus is indeed on absolute performance gains rather than performance per power draw. Based on the range of devices the M chips will be used for both immediately and in future it's not at all obvious that should be true. Think about the vision pro. Name of the game there is workable performance / battery tradeoff, not maxing out raw performance. Same is true for most user…

I think you nailed it. This is more than plausible, given Apple's penchant for valuing the packaging of technology (its application) over the sheer horsepower of cutting-edge tech. More performance per power draw would 100% fit with that and enable a lot of applications; Vision, Apple Watch, etc.

It's amazing how often tech media works themselves over.

Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#24

Post by galad87 »

galad87 wrote: post #7

Not surprising at all. the slides in Apple presentation showed exactly this low gain for the M3 Pro, and it was mainly compared to the M1 Pro.

To all those downvoting: the slides in Apple presentation showed exactly this low gain.

Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#25

Post by 3c6bYDXLMj »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #22
bloopernova wrote: post #20

I wonder what kind of usage metrics Apple has that led it to reduce (8 down to 6) the number of performance cores and increase (4 up to 6) the number of efficiency cores on the M3 Pro? Or the reduction (25%) in memory bandwidth? Maybe they're trying to get people to buy the Max version? The spec differences are interesting: M3 Pro, 6 efficiency, 6 performance, 18 GPU, 16 Neural cores, 150GB/s memory bandwidth M3 Max…

Way outside of my field of knowledge but would it be around prioritizing battery life above all else on the pro? Would also nudge people who _need_ the higher power features to not stick with Pro too, obviously.

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Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#26

Post by thepangolino »

michaelt wrote: post #17

> The M2 was launched in June 2022, but the Pro and Max launched in January 2023. They're not even a year old and have already been relegated to the trash heap of silicon history. It stands to reason the M2 chips didn't sell very well, so Apple wanted to get the M3 out ASAP to reverse that trend. That theory would make a lot more sense if the M3 was providing a big performance boost. Instead buyers of the M3 Pro get…

[dead]

Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#27

Post by megraf »

I have a work issued M1 Max, which has an incredible amount of computational power.

I wanted a personal computer, and purchased an identical machine, M1 Max, 64Gig, whatever. I realized 4 days later that it wasn't possible for me to push my personal machine anywhere near this machines limits. I returned it, and bought an extremely cheap ($240?) MacBook Pro, i5 - 2017.

It hasn't slowed me down, and my strategy is to use macOS and not sign in with my Apple ID. No Mac App Store, iCloud, etc. I use App tamer and little snitch to eke out any performance gains possible... it's an excellent machine, and I'm so happy with it.

I want to thank Apple for introducing this express route in the rat race, which has lead to an extremely friendly second market of intel, and 1st generation M's.

I implore you to ask yourself if you really need the next generation, or even the previous one before purchasing

Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#28

Post by stetrain »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #22
bloopernova wrote: post #20

I wonder what kind of usage metrics Apple has that led it to reduce (8 down to 6) the number of performance cores and increase (4 up to 6) the number of efficiency cores on the M3 Pro? Or the reduction (25%) in memory bandwidth? Maybe they're trying to get people to buy the Max version? The spec differences are interesting: M3 Pro, 6 efficiency, 6 performance, 18 GPU, 16 Neural cores, 150GB/s memory bandwidth M3 Max…

Way outside of my field of knowledge but would it be around prioritizing battery life above all else on the pro? Would also nudge people who _need_ the higher power features to not stick with Pro too, obviously.

That would make sense, but they also didn't break out battery life ratings between the Pro and Max chips, both are listed as 18 hours.

I suspect the Pro will have longer battery life in real world testing but we haven't seen that tested yet.

Re: First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro

#30

Post by JohnBooty » 

    "The first Apple M3 Pro chip benchmarks 
    have leaked! 

    It’s actually slower than the M2 Max based 
    on margin of error.
     
    M3 Pro: 15,173
    M2 Max: 15,242"
An alternate, and in my opinion more accurate and relevant, way of phrasing this would be:

    "Very cool! The new *mid-level* chips perform as well 
    (within
In what world is this not a good thing? Pretty solid annual incremental upgrade.

Of course I understand why people are underwhelmed with the incremental M2 and M3 gains, after the groundbreaking M1. Now that Apple have got all of that groundbreakingness out of the way, yeah, sure, it's going to be a while before something really groundbreaking again -- but that usually happens with entirely new architectures, and new architectures don't just fall out of the sky on an annual basis. And yeah, maybe we all hoped for more from the 3nm process.

Look at the annual incremental performance increases seen from AMD and Intel. The M3's progress compares favorably. I read some 14th-gen Intel benchmarks and they were mostly indistinguishable from 13th-gen benchmarks.

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