SSD speeds of M3 MacBook Pro

[konstantin1122]

I suggest that we all post SSD benchmarks as replies to this post so we can have them consolidated into one single place. (And hopefully, make Apple aware that more and more people care and/or are aware of what they are being charged for and whether it's worth the price.)
I hope this would be helpful open-source knowledge for everyone interested in the speeds of any of the newest M3 MacBook Pro laptops (with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips). As the speeds are not advertised by Apple, some people might be (unpleasantly) surprised once they buy a MacBook Pro and it is not in line with their expectations.
I will do my best to aggregate the samples in a table or even a chart.
AmorphousDiskMark and Blackmagic Disk Speed Test are the most popular apps for testing, and using any of those would be easier to summarize. Keep in mind that Blackmagic DST measures only sequential read and write speeds, while AmorphousDiskMark is more advanced. Therefore, I believe that results from AmorphousDiskMark would be more interesting. However, we have to ensure that the test parameters are (nearly) the same, e.g. using the same test file size. It would be interesting to see the random access speeds as well in addition to the sequential speeds shown by the Blackmagic DST app.

Device type	Memory	Storage	SSD speeds	Additional info

You can post a sample below as a reply as text or via a link to a screenshot including the following information:

• M3/M3 Pro/M3 Max chip(set) including the number of CPU and GPU cores
• The laptop screen size: 14-inch or 16-inch (to see if there are benchmark inconsistencies between the two or thermal throttling)
• The amount of RAM (to see how much influence it has on the speed results)
• The storage size (512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB or 8TB)
• The speed results
• The amount of used space (would be helpful to know as well as it influences the speeds)
• The chip configurations (for those who have done a teardown of the laptop) as a description or image

 

[dgdosen]

I'm wondering about the SSD speeds of 1TB Max vs 1TB Pro...

 

[strayduck]

After seeing YouTube videos showing the M3 disk speeds around the same as my Intel Macbook Pro (~2,500 MB/s) I was prepared to be content with performance improvements other than disk speed.

Turns out, my early tests were quite surprising!

• Macbook Pro M3
• 16" screen
• 12 core CPU
• 18 core GPU
• 36GB RAM
• 1TB SSD
• 500GB free space on SSD (I bought the extra space to gain longevity presuming wear-leveling and the fact that these chips are soldered onto the damn motherboard)
• Disk write: 6,443 MB/s
• Disk read: 4,861 MB/s
• Tested with: BlackMagic

 

[RyanFlynn]

• Macbook Pro M3 max
• 16" screen
• 16 core CPU
• 40 core GPU
• 128GB RAM
• 8TB SSD
• 1.5TB space left on the Disk
• write: 8051 MB/s
• Disk read: 5606 MB/s
• Tested with: BlackMagic

 

[solouki]

• Macbook Pro M3 max, 16" screen, 16 core CPU, 40 core GPU
• 128GB RAM, 8TB SSD, 2TB open space left on the Disk
• Tested with: BlackMagic: 8236MB/s W, 5564 MB/s R
• Tested with: AmorphousDiskMark: 16GiB, Seq1M QD8: 7514 MB/s W, 7159 MB/s R
• Tested with: AmorphousDiskMark: 1GiB, Seq1M QD8: 8967 MB/s W, 7196 MB/s R

 

[raythompsontn]

8TB SSD, 2TB open space left on the Disk

You have 6 TB of data stored on your machine? What are you using for backup? Spinning rust as there are no 6 TB external SSDs that I have been able to locate.

 

[solouki]

You have 6 TB of data stored on your machine? What are you using for backup? Spinning rust as there are no 6 TB external SSDs that I have been able to locate.

Hi raythompsontn,

My MBP's SSD usually varies between 4TB and 7TB of data on it at any one time, depending on which data/project I am currently computing --- I do appreciate the speed of Apple SSDs. I also have 4TB and 8TB external SSD storage for relatively fast transfer of data to and from computers to "ultimate" storage, discussed below.

This is why I have fairly extensive shell scripts to manipulate/copy/transfer/archive/encrypt/decrypt these data on a regular basis --- and my current "ultimate" storage systems are comprised of multiple RAIDed 22TB WD IronWolf PRO HDDs (yes, I know 24TB and 26TB drives are currently available -- and when I upgrade I'll upgrade to the largest drives available at that time).

Solouki

 

[danwells]

Why is BlacKMagic consistently showing writes that are gigabytes per second higher than reads. I have another supersized M3 Max (16/40, 64 GB RAM, 8 TB disk), snd my BlackMagic result is pretty much identical to RyanFlynn's. I tried Amorphous and pretty much got solouki's result. strayduck's machine isn't quite as fast (nor would I expect it to be, due to fewer NAND channels), but it, too has significantly faster writes than reads - especially, but not limited to, Blackmagic.

 

[solouki]

Why is BlacKMagic consistently showing writes that are gigabytes per second higher than reads. I have another supersized M3 Max (16/40, 64 GB RAM, 8 TB disk), snd my BlackMagic result is pretty much identical to RyanFlynn's. I tried Amorphous and pretty much got solouki's result. strayduck's machine isn't quite as fast (nor would I expect it to be, due to fewer NAND channels), but it, too has significantly faster writes than reads - especially, but not limited to, Blackmagic.

Hi danwells,

Ever since Apple Silicon, the Blackmagic R/W speeds have been unbalanced. This was not the case, however, on the old Intel MBPs where the R/W speeds were much closer to each other with the Read speeds usually greater than the Write speeds, in my hands anyway. I've wondered about this Apple Silicon R/W discrepancy myself, but haven't looked into its cause. Probably someone else has written about its cause.

On the other hand, Amorphous can perform many other speed tests, both sequential and random R/Ws, QD1/8/64, and also with various sizes of data. Personally, I like the Amorphous tests better than the Blackmagic test, and think they better represent the disk speeds I find in practice -- again, the speeds that I find for my own personal large data transfers. The Blackmagic speeds are tuned to video codecs, so I suspect that they better represent the speeds found for video transfers, but I don't do much video transferring so Blackmagic is not as representative to my usage.

And, as you point out, the Amorphous speeds also often, but not always, favor the Write speeds over the Read speeds, but they are not as disparate as the Blackmagic speeds. I think we have to remember that on Apple Silicon we are dealing with an entirely different architecture for the "RAM" Unified Memory channels as well as the bandwidths to the SSDs, even the Thunderbolt 4 controllers.

If you figure out why this is the case, I'd be interested to know also. Someone, somewhere, has probably explained this discrepancy.

Solouki

 

[bigpoppamac31]

I wanna know the SSD speed for the base M3 14" MBP with 1TB SSD/16GB. That's what I just ordered. My current 2015 15" MBP write/read is 2512/2001.

 

[Fishrrman]

big poppa wrote:
"I wanna know the SSD speed for the base M3 14" MBP with 1TB SSD/16GB"

When you have it in your hands, download this and test it:

AJA System Test: Accurately Test Your System performance and speed

Predict the capabilities of any drive system for recording and playing back of various resolutions and codecs

www.aja.com

And then, tell US what speeds you're getting.

 

[bigpoppamac31]

big poppa wrote:
"I wanna know the SSD speed for the base M3 14" MBP with 1TB SSD/16GB"

When you have it in your hands, download this and test it:

AJA System Test: Accurately Test Your System performance and speed

Predict the capabilities of any drive system for recording and playing back of various resolutions and codecs

www.aja.com

And then, tell US what speeds you're getting.

I just used this on my current Mac. This is what I got. I'll check my new Mac when it arrives.

 

[dmccombs]

M3 Max, 36GB, 1TB, 14/30.

 

[bigpoppamac31]

My new current write/read on my new M3 MBP. Why is my read speed almost half my old Mac? (see a couple posts above)

 

[bigpoppamac31]

Shows better read speed with this app but a bit less write speed.

 

[Chrysalis99]

Im still pretty darn happy with my original M1 Pro Max

MacBook M1 Pro Max 16" 10C-CPU, 32C-GPU, 32GB, 2TB

 

[spinnn]

Any BlackMagic results for the 2TB SSD in 16-inch M3 Max, 128 GB RAM?

 

[nottorp]

M3 Pro /14"/18Gb Ram/512 SSD/ 85 Gb free

Write ~4200, read ~5000 with Black Magic. Fluctuates but this is what it sorta stabilized at.

Note that I didn't close any of my apps and both the storage and ram are full ish. Didn't have anything CPU intensive running at least.