M2 vs. M3 Buyer's Guide: How Much Better Really Is M3?

[Razorpit]

Though it’s already been 3 years and Apple is still selling the M1 Air. We’ll see if the next version of macOS includes any M3-specific features, but it will definitely still support the M1.

Good point, forgot about the Air. That was an odd transition as well because the G5 was 64-bit and the CoreDuo was 32.

 

[ric22]

I think they will, too, but it is way overpowered for the iPad. The iPad is a large iPhone. Good for media consumption. Not so good for anything else.

Way overpowered? That's like saying the A17 is too powerful for a phone. It kinda is, but that's how progress works 🤷🏼‍♂️

 

[seek3r]

I think they will, too, but it is way overpowered for the iPad. The iPad is a large iPhone. Good for media consumption. Not so good for anything else.

I wouldnt go that far, it's very limited compared to a regular computer, but it still can do a lot more than just media consumption. My iPA is the light personal computing device I toss in my bag with my work MBP when I travel for work for ex, it works great for that, and not just for watching netflix

 

[spcopsmac21]

I am not that smart.

I would have paid $550 for it.

 

[spcopsmac21]

Just curious, but how do you know that was the reason? SSD's can fail prematurely, well before their write limit is reached, for any number of reasons.

Futher, it seems unlikely you would reach that limit even with heavy swap. Folks on this site have done calculations. and concluded reaching that limit would take many years.

The only way to know it was specifically because of writes would be if you'd run a SMART anaysis (easy enough to do from the terminal, or using an app like DriveDx), and found the number of writes was approaching the max. Did you or someone at the Apple store do that and, if so, what was the number?

Or, better still, you could run a SMART analysis on your wife's repaired computer (just wait until she's used it for, say, a month—long enough to get a good average usage figure—and download a trial version of DriveDx). Based on the number of days your wife has been using it, and the total number of writes, we can determine the average writes/day based on her actual use, and calculate how long it would take for her to reach the drive's write limit.

Here is what the report looks like when run from the Terminal:

View attachment 2317222

Sent it to a professional data recovery service and paid through the nose for data recovery.
They were able to replicate the issues with the machine and said the moment it started to swap memory with the onboard ssd it crashed.
And that this is far from the first device on Apple silicon they have worked on with this exact issue.
And with their track record and success with recovering the data I tend to trust them as I’ve worked with them in the past.

Even Apple said the SSD was bad.

 

[WC7]

Sent it to a professional data recovery service and paid through the nose for data recovery.
They were able to replicate the issues with the machine and said the moment it started to swap memory with the onboard ssd it crashed.
And that this is far from the first device on Apple silicon they have worked on with this exact issue.
And with their track record and success with recovering the data I tend to trust them as I’ve worked with them in the past.

Even Apple said the SSD was bad.

I just hope mine isn't going to go the same route!

 

[WC7]

The future is RISC-V. Apple is looking at it. It will level the playing field.

Got to read more on that ... heard about it but not the details.

 

[theorist9]

Sent it to a professional data recovery service and paid through the nose for data recovery.
They were able to replicate the issues with the machine and said the moment it started to swap memory with the onboard ssd it crashed.
And that this is far from the first device on Apple silicon they have worked on with this exact issue.
And with their track record and success with recovering the data I tend to trust them as I’ve worked with them in the past.

Even Apple said the SSD was bad.

Sure, but in your original post on this you were saying what caused the issue was excessive swap (due to low RAM). While that may be true, there's nothing here that actually indicates that. All you know is that (a) the SSD went bad; and (b) it showed its issues during swap. That doesn't mean excessive swap caused the issue.

E.g., just because your shoulder hurts when you raise your arm above your head doesn't mean the injury was caused by that action. It's just revealed by that action. The cause could have been that bad fall you took last week.

You don't even have any data on how much your wife's SSD was actually used. But, as I said, you could collect that data by monitoring SSD usage going forward.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I sense traces of ChatGPT in this article and I’m bothered by it.

MR writers do not use ChatGPT.

 

[WC7]

I would have paid $550 for it.

Next time, maybe.

 

[seek3r]

Sent it to a professional data recovery service and paid through the nose for data recovery.
They were able to replicate the issues with the machine and said the moment it started to swap memory with the onboard ssd it crashed.
And that this is far from the first device on Apple silicon they have worked on with this exact issue.
And with their track record and success with recovering the data I tend to trust them as I’ve worked with them in the past.

Even Apple said the SSD was bad.

It doesnt follow that swapping was the *root cause* of the failure as you keep insisting. Seems like the large disk use of writing to swap was a trigger for causing a crash (probably because mapped memory wasnt available) because of the bad disk, but that’s not an indicator of the cause of the underlying failure. It seems unlikely that swapping was the cause of the actual disk problems, just the most obvious way to trigger a failure on the defective SSD

 

[ct1211]

I just unloaded a six month old 14" MBP M1 Pro with 16GB RAM because I could have maybe Word, Outlook Acrobat with 15 tabs of internet and I would get a warning I was out of memory on regular basis. My previous Intel i7's never went there. I now have the 14$ MBP M# MAX with 36GB and so far so good.

 

[darngooddesign]

I just unloaded a six month old 14" MBP M1 Pro with 16GB RAM because I could have maybe Word, Outlook Acrobat with 15 tabs of internet and I would get a warning I was out of memory on regular basis. My previous Intel i7's never went there. I now have the 14$ MBP M# MAX with 36GB and so far so good.

I'm not sure what you were doing, but my M1-Pro with 16GB has never given me that warning even with Photoshop, Lightroom, Figma, Mail, Safari with ~15 tabs, Music, FB Messenger, Messages, Weather, and several other apps all running. I don't even bother closing apps because it never feels strained.

 

[JasonCManley]

I got my wife a 14" M3 MacBook Pro with 16GB/512SSD from BHPhoto on Black Friday for $1,566.55.

Pretty good deal, no?

 

[lowkey]

Go on then, list a use case for someone that needs more CPU/GPU power than an M3 but needs less power than is provided by an M3 Max?

👀🤷🏼‍♂️

And no listing artificially created constraints like ports and RAM and SSD size limits, please. Let's just focus on the compute power and not on the extended options opened up in the purchasing menu when you buy a pricier chip.

Ok challenge accepted. Although it’s not much of a challenge.

I have a Mac Mini M2 and a 14” M1 Pro MBP.

I have MANY Cubase songs that either will not play back or are borderline unstable on the M2 but are perfectly fine on the M1 Pro. But I have NEVER run out of CPU on the M1 Pro, so the Max chip is more than I need.

My M1 Pro is way less powerful than the M3 Max, but more powerful than the M3.

So for me the M3 Pro would be perfect.
I need the additional CPU of the M3 Pro over and above an M3 but I don’t need the additional CPU of the M3 Max.

Given the amount of users of Logic, Cubase, Ableton and other DAWs it’s hardly a rare use case.

 

[ric22]

Ok challenge accepted. Although it’s not much of a challenge.

I have a Mac Mini M2 and a 14” M1 Pro MBP.

I have MANY Cubase songs that either will not play back or are borderline unstable on the M2 but are perfectly fine on the M1 Pro. But I have NEVER run out of CPU on the M1 Pro, so the Max chip is more than I need.

My M1 Pro is way less powerful than the M3 Max, but more powerful than the M3.

So for me the M3 Pro would be perfect.
I need the additional CPU of the M3 Pro over and above an M3 but I don’t need the additional CPU of the M3 Max.

Given the amount of users of Logic, Cubase, Ableton and other DAWs it’s hardly a rare use case.

I wondered if you would mention DAWs. It's up for debate from what I've seen if the Pro or Max chips are more suitable- probably better for professionals to have the Max chips, but the Pro is enough for enthusiasts.

 

[lowkey]

I think you would be surprised. How many Pro studios have you been in? They often have loads of hardware that means their computers do less of the heavy lifting for audio processing which is what takes up the most CPU.

If you’re running through an SSL desk, recording to tape then all those plugins are not needed. Same with top Mastering engineers. They have EQ and compressors that can cost more than a fully maxed out M3 Max!

 

[ric22]

I think you would be surprised. How many Pro studios have you been in? They often have loads of hardware that means their computers do less of the heavy lifting for audio processing which is what takes up the most CPU.

If you’re running through an SSL desk, recording to tape then all those plugins are not needed. Same with top Mastering engineers. They have EQ and compressors that can cost more than a fully maxed out M3 Max!

I haven't been in a Pro studio for just over 20 years, in fact, so it's been a while. 😅 It's more your domain than mine, so it's interesting to hear a usage case where the extra CPU cores on a Pro chip are enough, while the base M chip struggles. Thanks

 

[ric22]

My M1 Pro is way less powerful than the M3 Max, but more powerful than the M3.

Just going back to this quickly... in what way is an M1 Pro more powerful than am M3? It appears to have it licked in terms of CPU- single and multi core, and GPU.

 

[WC7]

Coming from the M1 (not really what this thread is addressing), this new M3 in the base configuration feels quicker than the previous iMac M1 even for the 'lite' usage (Pages, Safari, Numbers, Mail, News, Music) ... I have no issues with 8 GB (the various software optimizations likely have some effect over two years, too.) Overall, I am impressed that Apple can provide hardware and software with this very smooth experience and low energy usage (no fan noise at all). The 24 inch screen is perfect for the simple everyday work I need to do.

 

[nik_88]

Just a couple of things:

1: everyone is claiming M3 Pro is a poor upgrade, but very few are considering that even despite its "modest" 8% improvement, it can manage the same tasks as its predecessor, faster, and with less power consumption. Approximately 10% less power consumption, something like that. In my opinion that's a great upgrade for a portable machine.

2: we are objectively speaking of extremely capable machine, I know we always need more power and more efficiency, but I'm actually writing this from my trusty (and ok sometime lagging) 2019 Intel MBP. I manage to edit 20+ wedding a season and other random jobs, I'm planning to upgrade really soon cause my Mac is actually sometimes suffering from heavy tasks and not running so smooth anymore. But it does the job fine. And speaking of numbers, the new M3 Pro has THREE times raw benchmark power than my 2019 Intel. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'll notice the differences and pretty excited!
And we are actually so lucky that these huge performance increases were possible in only 4 years.
Someone is disappointed that M3 Pro is "only" 8% faster, but within less than a year from its predecessor. With Intel, 8% gain was over 2/3 years 😂.

But again, even in my case, of a huge and an Intel/silicon upgrade, what I really benefits of? I can now export a wedding in 15 minutes instead than 45 and in the meantime to scroll on web, faster and smoothly than before. On battery power and not plugged like on my old Intel.
I admit, these are impressive improvements, but I honestly think that sometimes we forgot what is really useful for our needs and for our work. Techs are seeding us with new products every few months and we think we need them.
But what we actually need is what we already have sometimes.

I'm sure someone out there really needs the maximum power available, but for the majority of us, in my opinion, is sometimes better to invest in personal upgrades instead than machines upgrades.

Peace and enjoy your new (or old) device!

 

[theorist9]

They kinda took the M3 Pro from being somewhat close to the Max to being close to the base chip. Being in the middle would have been ideal. It seems weaker now than it needed to be. Apple could pretty much scrap the Pro chip and go from base to Max. I struggle to see who the Pro chip now serves, aside from people that want support of 2 monitors.

Seems they hit it pretty close to the middle. Comparing the max config for each chip, we have:

These put the Pro exactly in the middle, or nearly so:
CPU cores (base/Pro/Max): 8/12/16
GPU cores (base/Pro/Max): 10/18/40
storage, TB (base/Pro/Max): 2/4/8

This is somewhat in the middle, but not quite:
bandwidth, GB/s (base/Pro/Max): 100/150/400

Where the Pro's below middle are here:
RAM, GB (base/Pro/Max): 24/36/128
ProRes encode and decode engines (base/Pro/Max): 1/1/2
video encode engines: 1/1/2

OTOH, where the Pro's identical to the Max is here:
TB ports (base/Pro/Max): 2/3/3

 

[Chuckeee]

RAM, GB (base/Pro/Max): 24/32/128

Maximum ram on M3Pro is 36GB, 32GB was the limit on the M2Pro

There is also a similar trend with the maximum number of displays

 

[theorist9]

Maximum ram on M3Pro is 36GB, 32GB was the limit on the M2Pro

There is also a similar trend with the maximum number of displays

Thanks, I corrected the typo. I was actually looking at the M3 specs when I typed that, but my brain reset that to 32 .

 

[theorist9]

Just going back to this quickly... in what way is an M1 Pro more powerful than am M3? It appears to have it licked in terms of CPU- single and multi core, and GPU.

GB 6 Metal (GPU) performance:

GB6 MC CPU performance: