"the most advanced chips for a personal computer", says Apple. This is not an objective statement.
Name the more advanced chip then... Intel and AMD fall short.
What's the budget?
Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
861–870 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#862I feel very disappointed that the laptops lack decent i/o. They spend all this time talking about how advanced the GPU is, but it's a $1,600 laptop that can only power one external display or a 2,000 laptop that can only power two displays? Plus they are nerfing the desktops by only offering the all-in-ones with m2, so you can walk into a store and want to buy any other desktop now you are paying a huge premium for o…
> Plus they are nerfing the desktops by only offering the all-in-ones with m2
I'm confused by this statement. The iMacs leapfrogged M2. The new models shipping next month will have regular M3 chips, replacing M1 models.
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#863Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly this, but also consider Apple is playing major catch up with generative AI. I could see avoiding mention just to keep it a bit further from the mind of reviewers.
Could be, but people are already using M2 Ultra for LLM stuff and like it. Seems like Apple would double down on that.
I agree the machines have been good to run various ML models that aren’t running on other PCs in their category. (Though, shrinking the resource requirements seems like a never ending exercise.)
Apple likes to wait until it can announce something with a most around it. In this case, more compute isn’t enough, I don’t think.
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#864Finally time to upgrade my 2017 i7. For over 1 year the battery meter has said "Service Recommended" and in the last 2-3 months multiple key caps are literally falling off and regularly get jammed while I try to type. I figure the 16" with M3 Max and 64 GB is a good machine that will last me 5-6 years but I'm not sure if I should pony up for the 2TB storage upgrade. I just pray this revision won't have some unexpecte…
It's harder than ever to be excited to spend money on an upgrade, despite the overall machine being better than ever. RAM and SSD upgrades are comically expensive in Canada, maybe the former of which being slightly more justifiable. $500 for the ram upgrade $750 to ugrade from 512gb to 2tb, so really I'd be paying something like $1000 on just basic storage. It's kind of insulting.
Yes, totally agree, which is why I'm waffling over the upgrade. From 1TB to 2TB is $500 CAD extra. It is just so insanely out of line with the actual cost of the memory. I'm looking at Amazon NVMe SSD and a decent looking 2TB drive is in the range of $150 CAD! I don't care how high quality whatever it is they are using is ... that is ridiculous markup. And since everything is soldered nowadays it isn't practical to buy and install oneself.
My current HD is 500 GB and I have ~140 GB free. But I've also turned up the iCloud offloading feature, stored larger media files like videos on an external SSD and a few times gone through folders removing files to clean up space.
I suppose if I want to play around with ML models then I should just bite the bullet and get more space. Fair play to Apple knowing how to squeeze every last cent out of their wannabe pro users.
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GPU can saturate it for sure. Llama.cpp is a pretty extreme cpu ram bus saturator, but I dunno how close it is (and its kind of irrelevant because why wouldn't you use a Metal backend).
Well, Metal can only allocate a smaller portion of “VRAM” to the GPU — about 70% or so, see; https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/10580 If you want to run larger models, then CPU inference is your only choice.
Aren't these things supposed to have cores dedicated to ml?
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#866Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new efficiency cores are 30% faster than M2, and the performance ones 20% faster, so lets do the math: M2: 8 + 4 M3: 6*1.2 + 6*1.3 = 7.2 + 7.8 That’s nearly double the M2’s efficiency cores, a little less on the performance ones. They do say the system overall is up to 65% faster, and has lower power consumption at the same performance level.
You're not considering the difference in performance between the p and e cores. The math should be something more like: M2 pro = 8*3 + 4 =28 (the *3 representing that the performance cores contribute ~3x more to total system performance than the efficiency cores) M3 pro = 6*3*1.15 + 6*1.3 =28 (apple claims 15% more performance for the p cores not 20%) > They do say the system overall is up to 65% faster, and has lowe…
If you wanted to be even more accurate, you'd also have to take into account that most tasks are executed on the E cores, so having more of those, or faster, will have a much greater impact than any improvement on the P cores. It's impossible to estimate the impact like this - which is why Apple's performance claims[1] are based on real-world tests using common software for different workloads.
In summary, there is supposedly improvement in all areas so the reduced P core count doesn't seem to be a downgrade in any form as the OP suggested.
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#867And 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…
You might want to get that checked out
I’ve got a 8GB Mac mini, 16GB iMac and a 64GB MBP, all on Apple Silicon. In 99% of the cases I can’t tell a difference in responsiveness or use and my main use is app development in Xcode and high resolution photo and video editing.
Even when actively monitoring things I mainly see a difference in memory compression, not so much in swap.
As for Intel, before Apple Silicon I had the most tricked out Intel MBP and I’d rather chop my left arm off and be stuck in a bunker for a year with just the 8GB Mac mini than have to use that the Intel MBP is had. Unless perhaps the bunker has no heating, in which case I might have to reconsider.
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#868These 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…
> It's as if their hardware is meant to be e-waste. But the chassis is made from 100% recycled aluminum!~ On a serious note, Apple has a simple and working strategy, to which they're 100% committed: repair only in authorized service points, otherwise recycle. Making devices user-repairable adds costs and compromises on specs; you can't put a number on the disks being replaceable as easily as you can put a number on s…
I've looked at their hardware. I would've bought if it weren't for the soldered down flash chips. I've seen plenty bad SSDs.
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#869I feel very disappointed that the laptops lack decent i/o. They spend all this time talking about how advanced the GPU is, but it's a $1,600 laptop that can only power one external display or a 2,000 laptop that can only power two displays? Plus they are nerfing the desktops by only offering the all-in-ones with m2, so you can walk into a store and want to buy any other desktop now you are paying a huge premium for o…
> I feel very disappointed that the laptops lack decent i/o. They spend all this time talking about how advanced the GPU is, but it's a $1,600 laptop that can only power one external display or a 2,000 laptop that can only power two displays?
yep. powering 2+ screens on a mac is not a straightforward process. for the prices Apple is charging on their "pro" machines, it should be simple to plug in 2 or even more screens to get work done.
Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max
#870These 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…
My Windows desktop has generated significantly more e-waste per year than the Macs I have owned. Full stop. I've upgraded SSDs from 500gb to 1TB to now 2TB, upgraded graphics cards, and replaced a massive broken aluminum and copper heatsink. All in the last two years. I've had the same MacBook, in a similar timeframe. It gets just as much use. Its still rock-solid. Your concern is a hypothetical one. The inability to…
That's not hypothetical at all. You might want to look into issues people have encountered with the apple SSDs and how much swapping is involved on the lower specced units.
Regardless, I choose my non-Apple hardware how you choose your Apple hardware. I buy something which won't have to be upgraded or replaced for a long time.
Being able to repair hardware matters. It's fine if it doesn't matter to you and to others.