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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

#201

Post by mritun »

aduitsis wrote: post #156
dml2135 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seemingly no. So far it looks like (someone please correct me if I’m wrong): - M3, 1 external display - M3 Pro, 2 external displays - M3 Max, 4 external displays This has to be a product differentiation decision at this point, right? Is there any serious technical limitation against more displays in the base chip, that Apple has not been able to solve in three generations?

Mac Mini with the M2 Pro can drive 3 monitors, Macbook Pro with the M2 Pro only 2.

M2 Pro can always drive 3. The MBP just has one display built-in, so can drive 2 more.

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

#202

Post by Jensson »

nblgbg wrote: post #171
pram wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were comparisons to the M1 and M2 in the presentation, and indeed the linked website.

The M3 chips are 30% faster than the M2 chips for efficiency cores and 15% faster for performance cores. The overall performance is still impressive and there is no alternative to M*s when compared with performance per watt. But others have caught up, for example https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs is very good.

> But others have caught up

You mean others now got to use TSMC's 4nm process? These new M3 chips are probably on the 3nm process, Apple is still a generation ahead here.

It looks like Apples aim is to always stay a generation ahead of its competition, I wonder how long they can keep that up since they aren't running their own fabs.

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

#203

Post by nomel »

speed_spread wrote: post #192
dmitrygr wrote: post #159

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.

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.

20 hours isn’t full CPu usage, of course. The last intel laptop I had lasted a couple hours. My M2 gets me through the workday.

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

#204

Post by photonerd »

polishTar wrote: post #195
kivlad wrote: 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

Depends. Is it faster? Then it's an upgrade.

Has the CPU industry really managed to pull off it's attempt at a bs coup that more cores always === better?

I thought we'd learned our lesson with the silly Mhz Myth already?

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

#205

Post by mastercheif »

kivlad wrote: 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…

> 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)

I believe this is due to the TB4 spec requiring support for two external displays on a single port. The base spec M series SoCs only support one external display.

I’d expect the ports to work identically to a TB4 port in all other aspects.

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

#206

Post by photonerd »

nblgbg wrote: post #171
pram wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were comparisons to the M1 and M2 in the presentation, and indeed the linked website.

The M3 chips are 30% faster than the M2 chips for efficiency cores and 15% faster for performance cores. The overall performance is still impressive and there is no alternative to M*s when compared with performance per watt. But others have caught up, for example https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs is very good.

> But others have caught up

Then you proceed to link to one that... hasn't? (it's good, yes, but it's not caught up at all)

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

#207

Post by photonerd »

elif wrote: post #196
internet2000 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

more like "a hundred bucks less". The M1's go for maybe half... if you're lucky. Most are more.

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

#209

Post by coffeebeqn »

dmitrygr wrote: post #159
Kye wrote: 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.

With a 3070? Unless you have a backpack with a battery that’s completely unreasonable to expect. External battery packs that plug into USB-C are actually pretty small and affordable and easily 3x the battery capacity

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

#210

Post by mdasen »

An interesting thing about the M2 Pro and M3 Pro is that they shifted away from being mostly performance cores. The M1 Pro was either 6+2 P+E or 8+2 P+E. The M2 Pro was either 6+4 or 8+4. The new M3 Pro is either 5+6 or 6+6.

Apple has been shifting away from performance cores with each generation. M1 Pro: 75-80% P-cores; M2 Pro: 60-67% P-cores; M3 Pro: 45-50% P-cores.

This shows up when you look at Geekbench results. A 10-core M2 Pro (6+4) gets 12,100 while a 10-core M1 Pro (8+2) gets 12,202. The 12-core M2 Pro (8+4) gets 14,221. That's a 16.5% increase from having 20% more cores. In some ways, this feels like an odd result. Adding two additional M2 P-cores gets Apple a comparatively small result over the 10-core M2 Pro (less than the average core performance). However, adding two efficiency cores over the M1 Pro gives them the same 16.5% boost over the 8+2 M1 Pro.

If I had to guess, maybe it's thermal throttling when running the benchmark. If the additional P-cores can't truly be P-cores under 100% load, then their impact shows up less. Likewise, if the E-cores can match P-core performance under heavy thermal load, then it could show up as being roughly equivalent in the benchmark.

I wonder if real-world scenarios end up differing from benchmarks in a meaningful way around this. For example, core-pinning can be useful for warm caches and in a real-world scenario you might have a process the OS tries to pin to P-core-1 that has spikes in utilization while another process is pinned to P-core-2 with similar spikes. So both get the performance of a P-core and warm caches while the thermal load isn't that high so the P-cores are still at their peak performance (unlike a benchmark that's trying to use all cores as much as possible at the same time).

Maybe this is a business decision more than something based around how the chip performs. The big selling point of the M1/M2 Max was graphics (maybe the extra RAM as well). You could get the same CPU in the Pro or Max. Now the M3 Pro is a 5+6 or 6+6 CPU while the M3 Max is 10+4. 67-100% more performance cores becomes a selling point for the M3 Max even for those who might not care about graphics as much.

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