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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

#641

Post by signa11 »

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…

> 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 contrasting this with the recent TR4 announcements from AMD, apparently their PRO variants top (theoretically at least) at around 325GB/s (non-pro versions are half of this), so just from that perspective alone M3 Max's might be better ?

i always have the naive assumption here that keeping the-beast i.e. the cpu fed with data is much better for overall performance than just clock-rates etc.

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

#642

Post by dontlaugh »

polishTar wrote: post #278
1123581321 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E cores are ~30% faster and P about 15%. So the question would be how much the Es assist when Ps are maxed on each chip. In any other situation, more/better E cores should outperform and extend battery. I’m not saying that means you should want to spend the money.

I love Apple's E cores. It just sucks that the M3 pro gains so few given the reduction in P cores. Apple's E cores take up ~1/4 the die space of their P core. If the M3 pro lost 2 performance cores but gained 4-8 efficiency cores it'd be a much more reasonable trade.

I’m sure the difference is GPU.

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

#643

Post by leonroy »

turblety wrote: post #602
rafaelmn wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel straggler here ! When M1 hit I was certain I would get a M Apple in a year or two when they iron out the transition. It was just leaps and bounds ahead of others and the pricing was great. Now I think AMD and Intel caught up enough, Apple didn't keep the momentum, and they do standard Apple pricing discrimination - I think I'll take a gamble on Framework AMD version. I really like the idea behind the self-repai…

> Now I think AMD and Intel caught up enough Interesting. I don't really like Apple, mainly because of how they handle the app store vendor lock in stuff, and I hate macOS. But I use an M2 MBP purely because I can't find any other laptop that has the same fast performance, long battery life, quiet fan noise, no heat. Can you recommend an AMD/Intel or anything that comes close? I'd switch in a heartbeat. The closest t…

I just bought a Thinkpad T14S Gen3 after evaluating a bunch of notebooks.

Compared to my Macbook Air the Mac excels in a couple of areas which Thinkpad is lacking in. Like ambient light sensor, port quality (ie. how recessed the USB-C port is and how much strain it can take), audio output quality (Macs have powered headphone jacks for high impedance headphones) and of course speaker quality which on Macs is second to none.

The Thinkpad by comparison has poor quality speakers, no ambient light sensor so it doesn't auto adjust the screen or keyboard backlight. Its USB-C ports are also not very strong so the any strain on them or wiggle will cause them to disconnect - they certainly feel very fragile.

I hear the Thinkpad Z13/Z16 is more comparable to a Macbook but again it doesn't have little details like an ambient light sensor which seems an odd omission in a luxury laptop and price wise it's practically the same.

That said, the new AMD Ryzen 7840HS and 7940HS chips are pretty competitive with an equivalent Apple M2:

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs

https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac14-15

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

#644

Post by aatd86 »

threeseed wrote: post #476
ChuckMcM wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering now if Apple tracks this sort of stuff in their released machines. I know my iPad always asks me if I want to send stats to Apple (and I always say no). So let's say that enough people do, then do they have a good idea of how often all the performance cores are used? Max memory B/W consumed? Stuff like that. Back when I was at Intel there were always interesting tradeoffs between available silicon/therm…

Apple shares anonymous usage data by default on all their operating systems and users are asked again on every major update. Given that there has never been any public incidents about it and what we know about similar defaults I would be surprised if Apple is getting less than 95% opt-in rate. But I suspect at high-end they only really care about the performance of a few dozen professional apps e.g. Logic or Final Cu…

Wait telemetry is opt-out?

And I've never heard people complain?

Genuinely surprised as it seems to be quite a commonly controversial thing amongst devs.

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

#645

Post by jbverschoor »

mschuster91 wrote: post #295
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'm one of them. For work, come and grab my 2019 16in from my cold dead hands - it may not have the battery lifetime of my private 2022 M2 MBA, but at least I don't have to fight weird issues with x86 Docker images (especially anything involving a JDK runtime, i.e. Tomcat, tends to act up). And no, converting these images to ARM isn't an option, the source image doesn't come from us, and we need to reproduce the exac…

So an occasional firmware upgrade is holding you back? If you install the guest drivers, windows is superfast under UTM.

The docker thing is nonsense if you're using orbstack for example.

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

#646

Post by benterix »

unclejack wrote: post #632

These are still going to be used in laptops with soldered flash chips for the SSD. Apple's laptops aren't meant to be used by people who expect to repair their laptop when the storage fails. Many people don't have access to replacement chips and services to have the flash chips found on the board replaced. It's as if their hardware is meant to be e-waste. The RAM is still not ECC. They focus so much on the shallow ma…

The point is, they don't want people to fix or upgrade their hardware, and they will fight to defend this strategy. Give me one reason why they should to it, from their perspective. If they have them glued, the equipment has shorter life and customers need to purchase a new one quicker. And since they can't replace components themselves, they have to pay exorbitant prices for 16 GB RAM or 1 TB storage that is cheaper than ever.

These are nice machines, though, and I buy one for building iOS apps every couple of years - but usually 1-2 generations later so that the pricing is more reasonable.

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

#647

Post by pjmlp »

als0 wrote: post #635
pjmlp wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on Windows while running Windows containers.

Before anyone else gets confused...Windows containers are only for Windows applications. If you have a Linux environment in your Docker image, then it's running on a VM. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscont...

Of course, what is there to be confused about?

It say it clearly on the name, Windows containers.

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

#648

Post by benterix »

aatd86 wrote: post #644
threeseed wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple shares anonymous usage data by default on all their operating systems and users are asked again on every major update. Given that there has never been any public incidents about it and what we know about similar defaults I would be surprised if Apple is getting less than 95% opt-in rate. But I suspect at high-end they only really care about the performance of a few dozen professional apps e.g. Logic or Final Cu…

Wait telemetry is opt-out? And I've never heard people complain? Genuinely surprised as it seems to be quite a commonly controversial thing amongst devs.

Well, Apple generally has so much info about your every step people stopped caring a long time ago.

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

#649

Post by runeks »

zik wrote: post #352
nblgbg wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I note that if those performance numbers are correct it'll still be a lot slower than Intel's Core i9-13980HX laptop CPU. The M2 Max was between 50% and 80% of the speed of the 13980HX on most benchmarks. A 15%-30% uplift will get it closer to the Intel part but still not reach it.

Good point.

However, when they’re that close in performance, I think power usage should be taken into account. It’s a laptop CPU after all. Maybe I’d rather have 80% of the performance at 4x the battery life

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

#650

Post by pb7 »

turblety wrote: post #602
rafaelmn wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel straggler here ! When M1 hit I was certain I would get a M Apple in a year or two when they iron out the transition. It was just leaps and bounds ahead of others and the pricing was great. Now I think AMD and Intel caught up enough, Apple didn't keep the momentum, and they do standard Apple pricing discrimination - I think I'll take a gamble on Framework AMD version. I really like the idea behind the self-repai…

> Now I think AMD and Intel caught up enough Interesting. I don't really like Apple, mainly because of how they handle the app store vendor lock in stuff, and I hate macOS. But I use an M2 MBP purely because I can't find any other laptop that has the same fast performance, long battery life, quiet fan noise, no heat. Can you recommend an AMD/Intel or anything that comes close? I'd switch in a heartbeat. The closest t…

> I don't really like Apple, mainly because of how they handle the app store vendor lock in stuff, and I hate macOS. But I use an M2 MBP purely because I can't find any other laptop that has the same fast performance, long battery life, quiet fan noise, no heat.

Buying their products for the same reason everyone else does is "liking Apple".

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