Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by rewmie » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

photonerd wrote: post #204

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

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?

> Depends. Is it faster?

The devil tends to be in the details. More precisely, in the benchmark details. I think Apple provided none other than the marketing blurb. In the meantime, embarrassingly parallel applications do benefit from having more performant cores.

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

#282

Post by Detrytus » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

3c6bYDXLMj wrote: post #70

throwaway019254 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will need to convince your politicians to lower import duties and taxes. And that $1599 USD is without taxes. So not the whole US has this price. It was always worth for me to travel to Oregon to have zero tax.

I think you mean, convince politicians to allow for the ridiculous tax-excluded display pricing that’s prolific in the US.

I think this is brilliant: let the people know how much of the price actually goes to the company, and how much to the government. Helps people make an informed decision on who's to blame for high prices of everything.

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

#283

Post by cultofmetatron » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

internet2000 wrote: post #158

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 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.

my intel died last week. had to get an m2 pro and THIS drops today. kinda salty that my intel couldn' have held out till the M3 was available

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

#284

Post by stouset » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

lathiat wrote: post #233

mastercheif wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I really, really wish they would fix this silly display scan-out limitation. I gave them a (frustrating) pass on the M1 given it was the first evolution from iPhone/iPad where it wouldn't have mattered. But seems silly to have made it all the way to the M3. Wanting to dock onto two displays even at the low end doesn't seem like such a niche use-case. I'm sure there is some kind of technical explanation but both Intel…

> Wanting to dock onto two displays even at the low end doesn't seem like such a niche use-case.

I mean, it almost certainly is? I would guess a majority of the low-end SKUs are rarely if ever attached to one external display. Two would be rarer still.

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

#285

Post by stetrain » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

rickette wrote: post #84

stetrain wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been doing more multiples of 6/12 lately, I supposed it's related to the available chip sizes for the LPDDR5X. M2 and M3 go up to 24GB M3 Pro is available in 18GB and 36GB M3 Max is available in 36GB, 48GB, 64GB, 96GB, and 128GB

Why do I need to select the most expensive M3 Max version (the one with 16 cores) to get 48 or 64 gigs of RAM. The M3 Max with 14 cores only allow 36 or 96 gigs. Just let me choose 14 cores and 64 gigs.

Wild guess but if the base chip has 3 channels and the higher binned chip has 4 channels:

3x6GB = 18GB

3x12GB = 36GB

3x32GB = 96GB

4x12GB = 48GB

4x16GB = 64GB

4x32GB = 128GB

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

#286

Post by etchalon » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

Apple's biggest problem may be how good the M1 laptops were. I have a 14' M1 Max and there's no task in my workflow that's slow enough that I feel any real need to upgrade.

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

#287

Post by icedchai » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #220

TylerE wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like it's moved super fast. I just bought an M1 Studio earlier this year.

Almost four years now, for M1. I get the impression that people are used to Intel’s stagnation that we were stuck with for some time.

Only 3, unless you're counting the developer boxes? M1 machines were released in November 2020. However, M1 Pro and M1 Max were released only 2 years ago. Things are definitely picking up now...

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

#288

Post by mr_toad » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

0x6c6f6c wrote: post #200

soulofmischief wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even using ARM images you still need a VM because the MacOS kernel is not a Linux kernel, and containers rely on features of that kernel.

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

#289

Post by anemoiac » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:54 AM UTC

dml2135 wrote: post #121

anemoiac wrote: post #37

Can we use more than one external display yet?

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?

It’s frustrating. I wish they would just charge an extra $X for the privilege of using multiple external monitors. I like the form factor of the MBA as is… if I need to compromise on that, I might as well choose a different machine.

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

#290

Post by paustint » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:54 AM UTC

coverband wrote: post #241

And still starting at 8GB of RAM… Disappointed.

Seriously.... My 16gb MacBook pro M1 work machine runs out of memory constantly. I had a MacBook air 8gb and it was useless, it would freeze constantly and have crackly audio. I found that 24GB ram is really the minimum that is usable on M-series when doing any type of basic work.

Likely an output of so many electron based apps which are memory hungry, but if the memory is supposedly "really fast" then I would expect better performance. Never had the issue with Intel.

But with a nice bit or memory, the performance is really nice.