WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 38178185

(no title)

greendave | 2 years ago

> People 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%.

The M3 Pro has been neutered - the normal M2 Pro* was 8 Performance + 4 Efficiency cores (same as the Max) whereas the M3 Pro is just 6 P + 6 E cores.

If you want the full complement of CPU cores on the M3, you have to get the Max variant.

*There was a special 'low' end M2 pro that only had 6 + 4 cores.

discuss

order

JohnBooty|2 years ago

    The M3 Pro has been neutered
Neutered? What a strange way to describe a chip that is about faster than its predecessor in most benchmarks. You're strangely focusing on an implementation detail rather than actual performance.

https://www.theverge.com/23944344/apple-macbook-pro-14-2023-...

If a car company replaced a 4.0 liter internal combustion engine with a 3.8 liter engine that outperformed its predecessor, would you say that they "neutered it" because hey, you're getting 0.2 less liters of displacement?

For me to call something "crippled" or "neutered" or some such it would have to have actual functionality removed, or a meaningful reduction in actual performance. This is the opposite of that.

If you want to call the M3 Pro an underwhelming upgrade relative to the M2 Pro, that's your right and I don't really disagree with you, but I also think it compares pretty favorably to the annual incremental upgrades from Intel and others.

greendave|2 years ago

The M3 Pro has been restricted to prevent it from competing with the Max on CPU performance. Whereas the M2 Pro and M2 Max were essential identical on CPU performance (with the exception of the 10-core M2 Pro which was only standard on the low-end 14" model).

To me that feels like neutering.

Doesn't mean it's a bad chip/machine but clearly the product marketing people made the call here.

developerDan|2 years ago

Sure it might be faster but in context it doesn’t feel like a significant improvement. The base M3 and the M3 Max have fairly large gains over their predecessors, but the M3 Pro doesn’t have nearly as large of a gain (this is all mentioned in the article). It stands out and it’s pretty clear that Apple wants people to “upgrade” to the Max which comes with a +$800 margin.

I’m holding judgement until I see real world performance benchmarks vs synthetic but I fully understand everyone’s reservations with the M3 Pro.