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

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

#51

Post by api »

bloopernova wrote: post #46
api wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing memory bandwidth is particularly bad given that most AI work loads are memory bound. With the memory bandwidth Apple's fully integrated GPU with shared memory is actually pretty good for smaller AI stuff like running and fine tuning llama2-sized models. It gives you a decently fast GPU option with a lot of RAM. NVIDIA cards with similar RAM are a decent fraction of the price of a whole Pro or Max M chip lapt…

> most AI work loads are memory bound. Is that the reason why the number of neural cores stays the same, do you think?

The neural engine in Apple chips is really for small models for doing things like Face ID, local inference for Photos.app, etc. It's there to run those small models with very little power consumption. It's not that great for huge models. The GPU is better for those, and they have been adding cores and performance there.

But yes, most large models are pretty heavily memory bound.

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

#52

Post by whywhywhywhy »

megraf wrote: post #27

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 u…

> MacBook Pro, i5 - 2017

Sorry but this is the worst machine Apple has made in possibly around 20 years. Feels heat constrained in it's own chassis, fan turns on at the drop of a hat, battery not big enough for sustained work and started durning off at 20% on older units when you open a video call, charger it ships with not powerful enough to jump start from empty without a 5 minute wait, keyboard feels gross makes too much (ugly crunchy sounding) noise and keys jam from everyday dust.

M1 was heaven after that shambles and I can never go back to hot, noisy and low battery laptops after this.

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

#53

Post by dagmx »

s3p wrote: post #43
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 confuses me because shouldn't those people just get an M3? and then those who get the M3 Pro want better performance. I don't understand the 'pro' naming scheme means if they're not serious about making it pro.

What is Pro to you? I ask, because it can be a huge range of professional tasks and many won’t need the higher performance of the Max, but will benefit from the efficiency of the Pro.

The Pro is still a significant jump over the base M3, both in performance and capability across every metric. It just happens to be a mid range SKU and for some reason people seem to think in binary high/low terms.

I’d bet it’s the most common of the SKUs sold.

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

#54

Post by runeks »

vardump wrote: post #45
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'…

I'd say gains from M2 Max to M3 Max are pretty reasonable. Of course same might not apply to M2 Pro to M3 Pro.

> I'd say gains from M2 Max to M3 Max are pretty reasonable.

How are they reasonable to you? As I see it, they just added 50% more (performance) cores to the M3 Max compared to the M2 Max (12 versus 8, respectively) and achieved 50% higher multi-core performance: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/3434546?baselin.... No rocket science here.

If anything, we should be asking “why only +50% for multi-core performance when single core performance increased by ~20%?”.

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

#55

Post by bearjaws »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #52
megraf wrote: post #27

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 u…

> MacBook Pro, i5 - 2017 Sorry but this is the worst machine Apple has made in possibly around 20 years. Feels heat constrained in it's own chassis, fan turns on at the drop of a hat, battery not big enough for sustained work and started durning off at 20% on older units when you open a video call, charger it ships with not powerful enough to jump start from empty without a 5 minute wait, keyboard feels gross makes t…

Is there a name for this type of person? Who will just waste any amount of time possible to get a 1% performance improvement.

I see it all the time in the overclocking community, and more seldomly in the portable space.

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

#56

Post by JohnBooty »

greendave wrote: post #50
ajross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are picking on that lede tweet somewhat unfairly. Numbers in the rest of the article say that the same benchmark run between the two "pro" variants improves only 6%. And that's actually quite disappointing for a chip that's supposed to be a on a new semiconductor node. Not a lot of people make a laptop purchase decision over 6%. > Look at the annual incremental performance increases seen from AMD and Intel and…

> People are picking on that lede tweet somewhat unfairly. Numbers in the rest of the article say that the same benchmark run between the two "pro" variants improves only 6%. And that's actually quite disappointing for a chip that's supposed to be a on a new semiconductor node. Not a lot of people make a laptop purchase decision over 6%. The M3 Pro has been neutered - the normal M2 Pro* was 8 Performance + 4 Efficien…

    The M3 Pro has been neutered
Neutered? What a strange way to describe a chip that is about faster than its predecessor in most benchmarks. You're strangely focusing on an implementation detail rather than actual performance.

https://www.theverge.com/23944344/apple-macbook-pro-14-2023-...

If a car company replaced a 4.0 liter internal combustion engine with a 3.8 liter engine that outperformed its predecessor, would you say that they "neutered it" because hey, you're getting 0.2 less liters of displacement?

For me to call something "crippled" or "neutered" or some such it would have to have actual functionality removed, or a meaningful reduction in actual performance. This is the opposite of that.

If you want to call the M3 Pro an underwhelming upgrade relative to the M2 Pro, that's your right and I don't really disagree with you, but I also think it compares pretty favorably to the annual incremental upgrades from Intel and others.

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

#57

Post by mdasen »

WoodenChair wrote: post #21
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-...

At this point, Intel's roadmap seems unreasonably optimistic. They haven't launched processors with Intel 4 yet. They're set to be released December 14th, but we aren't seeing Intel launch a full line of processors with Intel 4.

If Intel 4 is coming in December 2023 in a very limited way, are we really expecting 20A in 2024?

I'd love for Intel's roadmap to be real, but it just doesn't seem likely. I guess it also depends on what you mean by "in 2024". For example, Intel 4 came to us "in Q3 2022"[1], but we aren't seeing any processors until 17 months later. If Intel 20A comes to us "in Q3 2024", but we don't see any processors out until December 2025, that's a big difference. It's an especially big difference if it means that it's in processors in December 2025 in a very limited way.

TSMC's 3nm tech is shipping in Apple Silicon CPUs at high volume.

Intel seems to say "Intel 20A Q3 2024", but that isn't when we get CPUs with that tech. Maybe it's when their teams can create limited volume samples? Realistically, it seems like there's 18+ months between Intel's roadmap and the CPUs getting into something you can buy.

Again, I'd love Intel's roadmap to be accurate, but if Intel 4 started "in Q3 2022" and we're getting limited laptops with it in December 2023 or January 2024, that seems like Intel saying that they've gotten to a point well before they can actually get that into our hands.

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/intel-roadmap-2025-explainer/

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

#58

Post by bearjaws »

leetharris wrote: post #39
megraf wrote: post #27

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 u…

The heat, battery life, speakers, microphone, display, connectivity, and more have improved in that time as well. I'd rather have a low end new Mac than a high end old Mac.

Seriously the M1 Air will crush the 2017 MBP, why you would choose louder and less battery life after being comfortable spending $2000 is beyond me.

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

#59

Post by alexpenny »

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…

I think differentiating the pro and max is a big part of it, but it also seems like they're trying to spread out the benefits of the switch to 3nm over time. I would expect performance cores and bandwidth to go back up next year to maintain steady performance increases year over year.

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

#60

Post by sgjohnson »

thih9 wrote: post #42
sgjohnson wrote: post #14

It was a deliberate choice to differentiate between Pro and Max There's a 45% performance uplift between M2 Max and M3 Max in benchmarks. You still get more performance between M2 Pro and M3 Pro. And you get significantly more if you're upgrading from M1 Pro.

Agreed. Also, I see the discussion about pro vs max being focused on performance, but what about thermals or battery life? Perhaps many professional users would be better off using pro and not max?

> Perhaps many professional users would be better off using pro and not max?

That would be entirely dependent on whether they benefit from the extra performance or RAM that you can get with Max.

I don't think that there's a significant difference in thermals or battery life on identical workloads. My M2 Max gets me through a full working day with 30-50% charge still left. It's the only laptop I've ever had I can be completely confident about should I not bring a charger with me.

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