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First Apple M3 Pro Benchmarks Show Surprisingly Low Multi-Core Gains over M2 Pro
- HatchedLake721 3y agoArticle about a clickbait tweet, comparing M2 Max against M3 Pro.
- Apocryphon 3y agoIf a tweet embeds no link, can it really be clickbait?
- brookst 3y agoIt’s trying to bait you to click on the link to the tweet.
- mort96 3y agoYeah I would phrase it as "clickbait article about engagement bait tweet". Point stands.
- adolph 3y agoIt's baiting all the way down. A proc family iterates; the meaning of a digit change is debated; the bicycle-for-a-mind's bell tolls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle-for-the-mind-1990/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- PakG1 3y agoEven so, my regret over buying an M2 Pro just before the M3 was released decreases each day. In fact, it might start going negative such that I’m happy to have bought the M2.
- sbuk 3y agoTo be honest, I was in the same boat with M1 -> M2. Not that the M2 wasn’t an improvement, and as pointed out this article compares M2 Max to M3 Pro, it’s just that M1 was so much better than my i7 based MBP that the gains made by M2 weren’t significant enough to worry.
- fmajid 3y agoThe M1 and M2 Pro were great value, too good to last for Apple in its revenue-maximization mode.
- twostorytower 3y agoIs it that surprising? They compared it to the M1 in their presentation.
- shadowfacts 3y agoThat's not surprising at all? The M3 Pro has 2 fewer performance cores than the M2 Pro.
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- galad87 3y agoNot surprising at all. the slides in Apple presentation showed exactly this low gain for the M3 Pro, and it was mainly compared to the M1 Pro.
- postalrat 3y agoWaiting for the claims that less performance is a good thing.
- ajross 3y agoLive by benchmark results and slick performance marketing, die by benchmark results and slick performance marketing. The market is ruthless; if you aren't delivering more of what you promised made you great last year, you're failing. Really the underlying news here, which the article doesn't really treat with, is that TSMC's 3nm node is sort of a bust. It's not looking like a full node upgrade at all (something that's been reasonably clear for a few months based on the leaked pitch/density numbers). They still have a comfortable lead over Intel, but scaling limitations come for us all eventually.
- WoodenChair 3y ago> They still have a comfortable lead over Intel, but scaling limitations come for us all eventually. We’ll see if that holds. Intel claims they are on track to launch “Intel 20A” in 2024. [0] 0: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-displays-arrow-lake-wafer-with-20a-process-node-chips-arrive-in-2024 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-displays-arrow-lake-...
- mdasen 3y agoAt this point, Intel's roadmap seems unreasonably optimistic. They haven't launched processors with Intel 4 yet. They're set to be released December 14th, but we aren't seeing Intel launch a full line of processors with Intel 4. If Intel 4 is coming in December 2023 in a very limited way, are we really expecting 20A in 2024? I'd love for Intel's roadmap to be real, but it just doesn't seem likely. I guess it also depends on what you mean by "in 2024". For example, Intel 4 came to us "in Q3 2022"[1], but we aren't seeing any processors until 17 months later. If Intel 20A comes to us "in Q3 2024", but we don't see any processors out until December 2025, that's a big difference. It's an especially big difference if it means that it's in processors in December 2025 in a very limited way. TSMC's 3nm tech is shipping in Apple Silicon CPUs at high volume. Intel seems to say "Intel 20A Q3 2024", but that isn't when we get CPUs with that tech. Maybe it's when their teams can create limited volume samples? Realistically, it seems like there's 18+ months between Intel's roadmap and the CPUs getting into something you can buy. Again, I'd love Intel's roadmap to be accurate, but if Intel 4 started "in Q3 2022" and we're getting limited laptops with it in December 2023 or January 2024, that seems like Intel saying that they've gotten to a point well before they can actually get that into our hands. [1] https://www.xda-developers.com/intel-roadmap-2025-explainer/ https://www.xda-developers.com/intel-roadmap-2025-explainer/
- sgjohnson 3y agoIt was a deliberate choice to differentiate between Pro and Max There's a 45% performance uplift between M2 Max and M3 Max in benchmarks. You still get more performance between M2 Pro and M3 Pro. And you get significantly more if you're upgrading from M1 Pro.
- thih9 3y agoAgreed. Also, I see the discussion about pro vs max being focused on performance, but what about thermals or battery life? Perhaps many professional users would be better off using pro and not max?
- sgjohnson 3y ago> Perhaps many professional users would be better off using pro and not max? That would be entirely dependent on whether they benefit from the extra performance or RAM that you can get with Max. I don't think that there's a significant difference in thermals or battery life on identical workloads. My M2 Max gets me through a full working day with 30-50% charge still left. It's the only laptop I've ever had I can be completely confident about should I not bring a charger with me.
- fmajid 3y agoThe M2 Pro was a barely crippled M2 Max. The M3 Pro is a properly crippled M3 Max. It's called market segmentation, and Apple is very good at it, but in the early days of M1 (and M2, which is just a warmed-over M1) they didn't have the engineering time to make 4 tiers (Base, Pro, Max, Ultra) and had to do a half-assed job of chopping off part of the Max to make the Pro. With M3, the Pro is its own design, with carefully designed limitations to force you to the Max.
- davnicwil 3y agoSeems to be based on the perspective that the focus is indeed on absolute performance gains rather than performance per power draw. Based on the range of devices the M chips will be used for both immediately and in future it's not at all obvious that should be true. Think about the vision pro. Name of the game there is workable performance / battery tradeoff, not maxing out raw performance. Same is true for most users of macbooks frankly, including (lots of) engineers using pros. It wouldn't be surprising to me that an acceptable outcome of the shift to the new node was maintaining performance of M2 with gains in battery life. More performance will inevitably come with M4 etc anyway.
- spandrew 3y agoI think you nailed it. This is more than plausible, given Apple's penchant for valuing the packaging of technology (its application) over the sheer horsepower of cutting-edge tech. More performance per power draw would 100% fit with that and enable a lot of applications; Vision, Apple Watch, etc. It's amazing how often tech media works themselves over.
- superkuh 3y agoRight. Apple machines have never been top performers. The M* machines are just good compromise machines when you need to be mobile and are energy constrained. Or sometimes, if you spend $6000+, they can have competitive absolute performance specs, re: available RAM and RAM bandwidth for tasks like LLM.
- michaelt 3y ago> The M2 was launched in June 2022, but the Pro and Max launched in January 2023. They're not even a year old and have already been relegated to the trash heap of silicon history. It stands to reason the M2 chips didn't sell very well, so Apple wanted to get the M3 out ASAP to reverse that trend. That theory would make a lot more sense if the M3 was providing a big performance boost. Instead buyers of the M3 Pro get 25% less memory bandwidth than the M2 Pro, and two of the performance cores swapped for efficiency cores. Not much to reinvigorate sales by motivating M2 Pro users to upgrade other than a higher number.
- thepangolino 3y ago[dead]
- hyperhello 3y agoThe M1 Pro came in binned 6+2 and I’ll bet most buyers took that configuration to save money or upgrade to Max if they want more performance and RAM. Apple could be providing a good upgrade for what people really bought, and with 6+6 and more single core score it is a real upgrade. Is it worth it? There’s no other improvements than the chip anyway.
- bryzaguy 3y agoAs others have speculated, maybe it improves battery life? I’d be curious to know if there’s a meaningful difference.
- FireBeyond 3y agoI feel like the M3 has been a bit of a misfire, launch-wise. In between all this and the fact that they're all shipping with Ventura and cannot be upgraded to Sonoma yet to me says that for all the claims of "Apple may not be first, but it will always do it best/right" are evaporating. Seems like this is a bit of a rush. And to all the people working the "They're comparing it to the M1, because that's who they're targeting for upgrades"? Bullshit. Try saying that about Intel, if they start benchmarking 14th gen chips against 11/12th. "Because they're targeting those users, not 13th gen owners". Think about how that sounds. Think about how you'd laugh if they tried it. Think about how Apple is spinning that, and you're buying into it. Hmm.
- bloopernova 3y agoI wonder what kind of usage metrics Apple has that led it to reduce (8 down to 6) the number of performance cores and increase (4 up to 6) the number of efficiency cores on the M3 Pro? Or the reduction (25%) in memory bandwidth? Maybe they're trying to get people to buy the Max version? The spec differences are interesting: M3 Pro, 6 efficiency, 6 performance, 18 GPU, 16 Neural cores, 150GB/s memory bandwidth M3 Max 1, 4 efficiency, 10 performance, 30 GPU, 16 Neural cores, 300GB/s memory bandwidth M3 Max 2, 4 efficiency, 12 performance, 40 GPU, 16 Neural cores, 400GB/s memory bandwidth They reduced the number of efficiency cores on the more powerful models. I'm not sure that makes sense to me. Edited to add: Why do the number of neural cores (16) stay the same across all 3 CPU levels?
- JansjoFromIkea 3y agoWay outside of my field of knowledge but would it be around prioritizing battery life above all else on the pro? Would also nudge people who _need_ the higher power features to not stick with Pro too, obviously.
- 3c6bYDXLMj 3y ago[dead]
- stetrain 3y agoThat would make sense, but they also didn't break out battery life ratings between the Pro and Max chips, both are listed as 18 hours. I suspect the Pro will have longer battery life in real world testing but we haven't seen that tested yet.
- s3p 3y agoThat confuses me because shouldn't those people just get an M3? and then those who get the M3 Pro want better performance. I don't understand the 'pro' naming scheme means if they're not serious about making it pro.
- dagmx 3y ago
- megraf 3y agoI have a work issued M1 Max, which has an incredible amount of computational power. I wanted a personal computer, and purchased an identical machine, M1 Max, 64Gig, whatever. I realized 4 days later that it wasn't possible for me to push my personal machine anywhere near this machines limits. I returned it, and bought an extremely cheap ($240?) MacBook Pro, i5 - 2017. It hasn't slowed me down, and my strategy is to use macOS and not sign in with my Apple ID. No Mac App Store, iCloud, etc. I use App tamer and little snitch to eke out any performance gains possible... it's an excellent machine, and I'm so happy with it. I want to thank Apple for introducing this express route in the rat race, which has lead to an extremely friendly second market of intel, and 1st generation M's. I implore you to ask yourself if you really need the next generation, or even the previous one before purchasing
- leetharris 3y agoThe heat, battery life, speakers, microphone, display, connectivity, and more have improved in that time as well. I'd rather have a low end new Mac than a high end old Mac.
- bearjaws 3y agoSeriously the M1 Air will crush the 2017 MBP, why you would choose louder and less battery life after being comfortable spending $2000 is beyond me.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago> MacBook Pro, i5 - 2017 Sorry but this is the worst machine Apple has made in possibly around 20 years. Feels heat constrained in it's own chassis, fan turns on at the drop of a hat, battery not big enough for sustained work and started durning off at 20% on older units when you open a video call, charger it ships with not powerful enough to jump start from empty without a 5 minute wait, keyboard feels gross makes too much (ugly crunchy sounding) noise and keys jam from everyday dust. M1 was heaven after that shambles and I can never go back to hot, noisy and low battery laptops after this.
- 3y ago
- JohnBooty 3y ago"The first Apple M3 Pro chip benchmarks have leaked! It’s actually slower than the M2 Max based on margin of error. M3 Pro: 15,173 M2 Max: 15,242" An alternate, and in my opinion more accurate and relevant, way of phrasing this would be: "Very cool! The new *mid-level* chips perform as well (within <1%) as the old *performance-tier* chips, so you get more performance for less money - or more perf for the same money." In what world is this not a good thing? Pretty solid annual incremental upgrade. Of course I understand why people are underwhelmed with the incremental M2 and M3 gains, after the groundbreaking M1. Now that Apple have got all of that groundbreakingness out of the way, yeah, sure, it's going to be a while before something really groundbreaking again -- but that usually happens with entirely new architectures, and new architectures don't just fall out of the sky on an annual basis. And yeah, maybe we all hoped for more from the 3nm process. Look at the annual incremental performance increases seen from AMD and Intel. The M3's progress compares favorably. I read some 14th-gen Intel benchmarks and they were mostly indistinguishable from 13th-gen benchmarks.
- gigatexal 3y agoExactly. A mid level part being basically equivalent to a top tier part from last generation is a huge win imo.
- scosman 3y agoYup. And good bump in single core performance, which you'll notice for most use cases. So really mid level part beats top tier part from last generation.
- ajross 3y agoPeople are picking on that lede tweet somewhat unfairly. Numbers in the rest of the article say that the same benchmark run between the two "pro" variants improves only 6%. And that's actually quite disappointing for a chip that's supposed to be a on a new semiconductor node. Not a lot of people make a laptop purchase decision over 6%. > Look at the annual incremental performance increases seen from AMD and Intel and I think these gains compare pretty favorably. I read some 14th-gen Intel benchmarks and they were pretty indistinguishable from 13-gen benchmarks. Exactly, because Raptor Lake and Alder Lake were fabbed on the same process (10nm++/Intel7, the name changed over the period for marketing reasons). That wasn't supposed to happen here, it was supposed to be new stuff.
- cush 3y agoLast year's benchmarking software benchmarks last years top-tier chips on par with this year's mid-tier chips... Go figure. What's the story here? Not saying it's wrong, but it's always best to wait for benchmarks of real-world scenarios covering what you're actually trying to do, especially when this launch was so GPU-focused on Transcoding, Ray Tracing, and ML.
- mdasen 3y agoOne of the interesting things I've noticed is that the transistor count for the M3 Pro hasn't gone up much. For example, the regular went from M1 16B, M2 20B, M3 25B; The Max went from M1 57B, M2 67B, M3 92B. On the other hand, the Pro went from M1 33.7B, M2 40B, M3 37B. For the regular, transistor count is up 56% over the M1 and for the Max it's up 61%. However, for the Pro it's only up 10% over the M1 (and slightly down from the M2). In terms of the cores, the M1 Pro was either 6+2 or 8+2 Performance+Efficiency cores. The M2 Pro became 6+4 or 8+4 so you still had 6 or 8 performance cores. The M3 Pro is either 5+6 or 6+6 so fewer performance cores. It just seems like the regular has kept the same 4+4 and gone up a bunch in transistors and the Max has gone from 8+2 to 8+4 to 10+4 or 12+4 (a decent step up in cores and transistors). The Pro, on the other hand, hasn't been given the same treatment. It's still a great processor, but it feels like it isn't quite the value that it was. The M1 Pro offered such huge performance with up to 8 performance cores. The M3 Pro feels like a bit of a weak spot in Apple's lineup where it'd be worth deciding between the M3 Max or the regular M3 depending on your needs. Still, I love Apple Silicon. It's amazing having a laptop that just feels so good to use that I don't think about raw performance numbers. Things just work without pain or heat/fans. I know that's hard to quantify, but my M1 MacBook Pro has felt so different from all the computers I've used before. I was using a 28W Intel 2020 MacBook Pro and my M1 MacBook Pro just felt completely different in terms of performance. I guess part of that is the raw performance with an M1 getting single-core performance that is 85% faster and multi-core performance that's 2.8x faster, but it's also that Apple did it at power/thermal level that means I never hear a fan and my laptop never feels warm. Maybe a big part of it is just that Apple Silicon was such a huge improvement that I'm still in awe of it. Maybe part of it is that I haven't seen what Intel has done since 2020 (and they've been catching up after years of mediocrity). Still, for the first time I feel like I'm waiting on non-CPU stuff for a reason to upgrade (like an OLED or microLED display or something).