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You guys can speculate and hypothesize about RAM all you want - Apple's gonna do what Apple's gonna do.

And none of us really knows what that is, until product release.
This site is called MacRumors.com

The VisionPro comes out early next year with M2; Apple ain't releasing M3 until afterwards - probably WWDC 2024.

I expect a quiet iMac update this fall to M2.
You guys can speculate and hypothesize about M3 all you want - Apple's gonna do what Apple's gonna do.

And none of us really knows what that is, until product release.
 
Is it me or is there less difference between the M2 and M3 Ultra when it comes to CPU/GPU counts? I hope they get quite a bit more from the M3 per CPU/GPU per clock cycle.

Note: I was not trying to say CPU divided by GPU. That would be silly. (Not that there is anything wrong with being silly.)
 
My 2013 MacPro (trash can) had OWC memory (128GB) and OWC 2TB SSD. This MacPro was fully and expensively upgradeable. One could swap out the CPUs, video cards, memory and SSDs. It was assembled in the USA.

It was replaced with my M1 Ultra 128GB and 8TB SSD. I had to buy the top model with max memory and storage as nothing is replaceable after it left the factory in China. I wonder if the Ultra will still be operational in 9 years and still supported by the newest MacOS like the trash can Mac was supported?
 
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It should be much more of a jump in performance from M2 to M3, as the gain between M1 and M2 was very minimal... and it's been years since the M1 release!
 
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Start with N3B and quietly switch to N3E whenever they like?

If I'm not mistaken, B is more expensive than E and Apple ❤️❤️❤️ maximizing profit. If B is all there is at launch, my guess would be E would hit ASAP thereafter... especially if there is even a nickel of savings in it. Or maybe a couple of 2023 Macs hit with M3 (B) and then the rest in early 2024 to next Fall will be M3 (E).

Even this crowd only really seems to care what number is painted on top of the chip. As long as it is M3- whether B, E or Z process behind the scenes- does anybody other than Apple really care?
Since Apple has already committed to N3B for their high volume A17 chips, and if N3E will be too late for M3x, perhaps they will wait for the M4x/A18 chips to use N3E?

I've read that N3B designs are not directly usable on N3E so it would require a new SOC version.
Or would they hold out for the faster N3P (which would use the same designs as N3E)?
 
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It definitely isn’t a “pro” Mac and never really has been. Always been so limited for sure. It’s like why not just call it the MacBook? When Apple had it as a MacBook they added the “pro” moniker to it to sell more. It never had the internals of a real professional Mac. It still doesn’t. The only thing I can see to compel people to buy it would be the TouchBar? Maybe someone likes that? The fan? No notch! That would be the one reason I can actually make out that really makes sense.
The old 13" MBPs didn't really deserve the name but these new M-series 13" MBPs certainly have the performance to handle the lower end of the pro spectrum for all of the text, numbers, slides, and browser work that a lot of people do. For coding, audio, and video work the 14/16 MBPs are worth the upgrades. The Touch Bar is probably irrelevant to most people that get these when they are issued by corporate purchasing departments.
 
The Touch Bar is probably irrelevant to most people that get these when they are issued by corporate purchasing departments.
This is probably one of the biggest reasons Apple has kept this model around IMO. Corporate departments generally tend to try to stick with the Pro, but not every IT department is necessarily going to want to spend $2000+ for every single machine either.
 
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MR didn’t mention anything about the hardware raytracing that’s supposed to come out with M3.

I’d love to get my hands on an 80 core GPU and test it as a gaming rig. The dream is to finally get rid of my PC for gaming. Either that or Apple should bring back eGPUs.
 
The base M1/2 chips only support one external montor as they only have room for two video channels on the chip.

The M1/2 Pro/Max/Ultra support more monitors.
Let's hope they fix this shortcoming when the proper successor to the M1 appears... the M2 seems like little more than a stop gap.
 
The old 13" MBPs didn't really deserve the name but these new M-series 13" MBPs certainly have the performance to handle the lower end of the pro spectrum for all of the text, numbers, slides, and browser work that a lot of people do. For coding, audio, and video work the 14/16 MBPs are worth the upgrades. The Touch Bar is probably irrelevant to most people that get these when they are issued by corporate purchasing departments.
The M1/M2 13” MBPs have the same SoC as the MacBook Air. What makes it “pro?”
 
I fail to understand where the "*extremely* notable performance improvements" should come from. They are just sizing down the structures. If you don't change the architecture and don't change the clock speed, it only will result in a smaller die that's potentially cheaper to produce and possibly more energy efficient.
Wrong. And historically, wrong about every single year for the last ten years. (Edit: To be specific, wrong about "they are just sizing down the structures". Your "if..then" is correct but not relevant to the real world, where they do change every year. See below.)

Some years, you get a process shrink. Some years, you don't. This year, they're getting one, which will allow them to build more cores (probably only on the Pro/Max chips) or shrink the chip. It would also allow them to boost performance by raising clocks, though I don't expect them to do that (or not much) on the laptops. Instead they'll take the lower power, translating to better battery life or lighter batteries.

The performance improvement comes from redesigning the chip, which (as I said) they do every single year. Most years the redesign has gotten them decent speed boosts. Some years it's been dramatic. Exceptionally, last year it was negligeable, because they had to shelve their original designs at the (relatively) last moment due to TSMC, mostly reusing the M1 design. Most (but not all) of the M1->M2 boost comes from clocks, not design.

This year, they have taken the original A16/M2 designs, worked on them more, and finally implemented them. They should be getting roughly double the usual yearly architectural improvements, plus likely significant further improvements on the high end (the M1 was very much a learning experience), even before you factor in additional cores on the higher-end chips. So, *before* you factor in any boosted clocks or added cores, you're likely looking at +20-30% IPC for the CPU cores. GPU I'm less clear on but it's likely to be similar, maybe better.
But smaller structures don't automatically increase the performance.

The increase in energy efficiency means the thermal load is decreased wich in turn allows for higher clock speeds. And it also allows for more transistors on the same size of die. So you could add more cores. Or you could change the architecture (alus/jump predictions/registers/...) to a more powerful and complex one... But that's not easy, and it would require a serious redesign.
It's not easy, but they do it every year.
 
Was really hoping to see greater number of GPU cores in M3. While current M processors are just fine for majority of users, graphics intensive performance is an achilles' heel of apple silicon; they're no match compared to discrete graphic cards on the market. Since e-GPU is not available anymore, adding more GPU cores and leveling up on graphics performance would make M processors an all-around perfect solution for everyone's needs.
You don't know anything about GPU performance just from the core counts. You need to know what each core can do. That's likely to be substantially boosted in the M3 generation. Don't give up on the improvements you wanted just yet.

Even TSMC is only promising a 10-15% performance gain at the same energy consumption over second generation 5nm. This may be closer to an M2 level performance gain versus an Intel to M1 performance gain (the latter of which will likely never be repeatable).
No, it will be considerably better than M1->M2 - even though I doubt they'll boost clocks much on the laptops. See my previous post for details.
 
That is nonsensical or sloppy, you can't have "only chip companies". TSMC is either the only chip company that is able to make 3nm chips OR one of the chip companies that is able to make 3nm chips. Which is it?
That's just wrong. "One of the only" is in common use. It is equivalent in meaning to "one of the few".

I called them on the facts already, though, grr, I also got it wrong. I forgot about the tiny crypto chips Samsung is shipping.
 
I would guess Apple more or less has to upgrade the base ram, just for video reasons.

Notice that most "4K" discrete video cards come with a base of 12gigs while 1080/1440 cards come with 8gigs these days. There's probably a reason for this if everyone does it.

The M-series shared memory is neat and all, but the displays Apple has to push both on laptops and 'pro' desktops tend to be rather immense canvases; more ram would be better.
Lol, you're off by orders of magnitude. How big do you think screen buffers are?

A 4K screen at 32-bit depth is 3840x2160x32 bits = just under 32MB. If you threw as many 6k or 8k displays at an M2 Ultra as it could handle, you'd still be using way under 1GB (under half, if I remember max # of monitors correctly).

The reason dGPUs have more memory these days is to hold assets before rendering, not for video buffers. That idea holds for Macs as well, of course; if you're doing really complex 3D work, obviously, you're going to want more memory. But this isn't relevant to normal users.
 
I would guess Apple more or less has to upgrade the base ram, just for video reasons.

Notice that most "4K" discrete video cards come with a base of 12gigs while 1080/1440 cards come with 8gigs these days. There's probably a reason for this if everyone does it.

The M-series shared memory is neat and all, but the displays Apple has to push both on laptops and 'pro' desktops tend to be rather immense canvases; more ram would be better.
I don’t think TBDR GPU’s like in Apple Silicon use video memory in the same way as IMR GPU’s, though. There might not be a lot of correlation there.
 
I’m ready for a M3 16” MacBook Pro. But It seriously needs to come in Midnight.

IMG_8362.jpeg
 
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12 Mo for the base Macbook air isn’t unlikely, cause Apple is not without competitors on this market. Dell, HP have moved to 16 Go Ram/512 Go ssd for their base 13’ laptops.
Students or people with tight budget are not ready to pay that much extra cash for Ram or storage. Apple must offer them a sensible price, otherwise will loose this market and the opportunity to trap them in its ecosystem…
 
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But not cost any more than the current 8/256 models. 🤔
The cost price for Apple would be how much? The SSD's probably vary by about $2 at the moment as desktops and laptops are abandoning such small disks. Apple usually waits until storage becomes so niche it is dropped by the factories. The RAM price difference... what do we reckon, $10 difference per unit for Apple?
 
The cost price for Apple would be how much? The SSD's probably vary by about $2 at the moment as desktops and laptops are abandoning such small disks. Apple usually waits until storage becomes so niche it is dropped by the factories. The RAM price difference... what do we reckon, $10 difference per unit for Apple?
Yea, I think it's about time. 512 should be the base on all of the machines, but at the very least, they should go ahead and do this on the Pro. I could see them dragging the upgrade out a few more years on the Air (256 is enough for the casual user, which is a significant chunk of Apple's market for the Air), but the upgrade prices they're charging now are the problem here. They wouldn't be able to put 512 into the pro, keep 256 in the air, and keep the Air a popular option because the 13" pro would immediately be a no brainer with the price that it's at now.

I think it's about time. I expect Apple to probably upgrade their machines in the next couple of years, I don't see them offering 256GB as the base beyond 2025 or so.
 
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