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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

#651

Post by prmoustache »

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…

A container that is idle and do not serve any request only really as memory in its footprint. There is no reason having tens or hundreds of processes not occupying cpu and i/o time would affect battery life in a significant manner.

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

#652

Post by runeks »

dansalvato wrote: post #575
mdasen wrote: post #210

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.…

I think your last paragraph sounds about right. The Max is a compromise on battery life for those who want the absolute most possible performance, but I think Apple is seeing a much wider audience get the Pro chip. Anecdotally, whenever I see a tech person mention their Apple silicon device, it's almost always a Pro chip. I'm sure only a small fraction of that user base is hitting all cores with a full load on a regu…

I chose the M1 Max over the M1 Pro only to get 32GB RAM. I couldn’t care less about the GPU (which makes it annoying to have to pay for it).

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

#653

Post by manmal »

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…

In case you are not already using orbstack, that might give you even more battery life (not affiliated, just a fan).

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

#654

Post by wickedsickeune »

paustint wrote: post #290
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…

I'm using Unity (uber wasteful) and Rider (Java) and an M1 air with 8GB is fine, no slowdown whatsoever* (compared to my desktop with 32GB on Windows). RAM is not the bottleneck in *NIX OSes, unless you do something that specifically requires a lot of RAM (eg machine learning)

*compiling is slower, but the desktop has a much faster CPU

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

#655

Post by ribit »

sosodev wrote: post #85

What's the deal with "dynamic caching"? I wish they would have talked about it more. It sounds like they're reducing memory allocations by only allocating what is actually needed.

From what I understand this is about assigning GPU resources (such as register files and other on-core memory) to shaders. Imagine you have a complex shader that has two paths, a frequently taken fast one that needs X bytes of on-chip memory to function and a rarely taken slow path that needs Y bytes (Y > X). Usually this stuff is statically partitioned, so you have to provision Y bytes for the slow path to run this shader. With dynamic partitioning, the shader will only allocate Y bytes if the slow path is hit, which frees the resources to load up more concurrent shader programs and improve the shader occupancy.

This stuff is only really relevant if you are dealing with complex uber-shaders and recursive function invocations, both of which are fairly common in raytracing pipelines.

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

#656

Post by jwr »

huytersd wrote: post #495
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 an Intel strangler because it’s the only way I can have Mac and Windows on the same machine. Am I the only person that really needs this? Parallels has trash performance.

I bought a cheap Windows crapbook just to run the two Windows-only apps that I need (terrible apps for alarm systems and photovoltaic inverters).

Apple Silicon laptops are so much better than Intel-based machines, there is really no comparison.

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

#657

Post by rewmie »

georgespencer wrote: post #542
rewmie wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any reason for not upgrading? Why is this sort of question always framed as if people have to provide a justification for not buying a new model, as if spending money on the new shiny without any reason is normal or desirable? We live in a day and age where hardware bought a decade ago still packs enough punch to run most of today's software without any hiccup. Why would anyone waste their cash to replace something…

> Why is this sort of question always framed as […] OP didn't frame it any way at all as far as I can tell, but either way it seems like an entirely reasonable question to ask of someone on a forum which is largely comprised of computer and programming enthusiasts who has not upgraded their daily driver for nearly a decade. > as if spending money on the new shiny without any reason is normal or desirable? Every singl…

> (..) it seems like an entirely reasonable question to ask of someone on a forum which is largely comprised of computer and programming enthusiasts who has not upgraded their daily driver for nearly a decade.

Are professionals expected to mindlessly throw money around at the new shiny without having absolutely no compelling reason to do so?

I think my post was rather straight-forward: people buy things only when they feel there is a clear upside to it. If you made that purchase 2 or 3 or 4 years ago, you need a very good reason to just throw it away and buy a new replacement. You need to at least make a valid case for it, otherwise you are just wasting your hard-earned money for nothing at all.

> Every single person who spends their money on "the new shiny" has a reason.

Why was OP framing that question on whether no reason was needed then, and instead people had to justify why weren't they wasting their money on the new shiny? Why is being new and shiny such a strong rationale that the onus of not buying is placed on not buying?

These are simple questions. In fact, all it would take is provide a single compelling reason why it would be a good idea to waste money on a M3 Macbook Pro when you already own a M2/M1 Macbook Pro, or even a late 2010s Macbook Pro. Hell, why on earth would you even waste money on a M3 Macbook Pro if you already have a M2 Macbook Air?

If you cannot answer this question, why would it be anything than absolutely foolish to pretend that people should justify not buying a M3?

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

#658

Post by bdavbdav »

nordsieck wrote: post #544
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…

> The M3 Pro loses the option for an 8TB SSD. Likely because it was a low volume part for that spec. That's not super surprising to me. Apple loves to charge stupid prices for storage and memory. Maybe it's worth it for lots of people to have the convenience of built in storage at the lower levels, but I have to imagine that most people would want 8TB of SSD would rather just get an external solution for... much less…

Yeah I can imagine that’s an incredibly niche setup. Maybe if you were editing on the go or similar, but even then, TB drives seems like a more pragmatic choice.

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

#659

Post by The_Colonel »

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.

Yeah, that's kind of surprising, given that Apple is often hailed as a privacy champion.

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

#660

Post by tapanjk »

faeriechangling wrote: post #457
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…

People have never bought Apple because of the hardware. They buy it because of the software, the aesthetics, the label, the support (It's easier to find an Apple repair shop than repair shops for any other brand anywhere in the world), and the integration with Apple's services. Comparing spec to spec is missing the point. Also while this is niche, at the high end (M3 max + 128gb) you end up with a laptop that can lit…

> People have never bought Apple because of the hardware.

Actually, a lot of people do. Here's one famous example [1], and I also know people in my network who love their MacBooks for the hardware.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...

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