I doubt N3E will be available till the later half of 2024 anyway, it isn't as though they had a choice if they wanted to launch new products in 2023...
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Did Apple rush an 'inferior' SOC to market ?
- Thread starter ProgRocker
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How do you come up with this? M3 and M3Pro are different die, different package size and each has their own mother/logic board…
Will people ever be satisfied? I remember a similar sentiment around the release of the M2 series that it wasn't 3nm node and was artificially boosted to increase performance albeit marginally…
As always one should look at price vs the actual performance they need. Nothing about M3 changes what was good about M1 and M2 and some things even regressed a little. Since there was very little change beyond the SoC and with the holiday season coming up I would expect to see some pretty good deals on remaining M2 MBPs - those are still really good buys. The wallet is the great equalizer here - there is no such thing as inferior If you do not overspend. But yes if someone were to "upgrade" their Mac Studio (or Pro) chasing top performance at the risk of wasting money it is very likely they could end up with an inferior product to what we might see in 6 months or so. But that is always the case with Apple.
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Right? And now I'm seeing people declare M3 is not worth it and everyone should just get an M2 computer at a discount. Really funny considering what was said of M2 last year.
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Yeah, and just wait to next year if people get M4 on their idolized N3E node! 😅
A node that is cheaper but inferior, at least in theory. That will definitely not increase performance more than what we are getting from M2 to M3.
Indeed they are, and I'm sure not I really understand why.
Money. The better clickbait headline you make as a vblogger, the more money you earn.
So likely M4 will be N3E. I wonder how much they'll go up on the GPU core count as they went from 38-40 on the M3Max model. That would be great if they can get 60 on the M4Max.
Oh that I get. I don't get the people who buy into it.
Compromise happens more often than you realize.
The cost of being on the bleeding edge is often too high and companies pull back, in order to survive, or to maintain profits, as is the case with Apple.
If you look at all of the iPhone/iPod touch SoC vs. the iPad SoC versions, you know that Apple made compromises back then. If you look at all of the features that go into iOS 15, 16, 17 that weren't included when the x.0 version arrived, you know that they made compromises.
Apple and consumers are paying a high price for being the early 3nm adopters.
The cost of being on the bleeding edge is often too high and companies pull back, in order to survive, or to maintain profits, as is the case with Apple.
If you look at all of the iPhone/iPod touch SoC vs. the iPad SoC versions, you know that Apple made compromises back then. If you look at all of the features that go into iOS 15, 16, 17 that weren't included when the x.0 version arrived, you know that they made compromises.
Apple and consumers are paying a high price for being the early 3nm adopters.
I'm coming from an M1 Pro and the M3 Pro is absolutely not a fantastic upgrade. As Apple advertised and what seems to be the case with some leaked specs a 20% improvement in compute.
Yeah the pro might not be a great improvement because they lopped off two p-cores and cut memory bandwidth by 25% (particularly important to GPU compute)
Yea perhaps. But my Powerbook Pismo cost $2500 some 23 years ago. My current 14" base M1 MBP cost less - and I've not even taken inflation into account. Guess which of these to computers will give me more value in day to day use as well as which will last me the longest? It's the M1, right? And I loved and used the crap out of that Pismo...
I believe that we are looking to a minor upgrade, just like the M2 vs M1: they were be able to push a lot more GPU cores (and also CPU cores) thanks to the 3nm vs 5 nm. You'll see something like that with the 2nm process, which will fit the M5.
Confoundingly the M1 -> M2 transition was far more beneficial for GPU cores
M1 Pro -> M2 Pro = +3
M1 Max -> M2 Max = +6
M2 Pro -> M3 Pro = -1
M2 Max -> M3 Max = +2
There is good reason to expect a more significant jump for the M4, as much of the wonkiness with the M3 series is almost certainly due to poor yields. Which means efforts to reduce transistor counts. I would not be surprised to see a bump of something like 4/8 at the very least.
Some days I think they should rename this site Mac Conspiracy Theories. If you truly believe Apple is screwing you over as bad as you posit in your posts, why would you buy anything from Apple now and then in turn, why are you still on this website?
I’m glad I’ve reduced my time on this site, because the number of truly delusional people on both sides of the arguments has multiplied exponentially recently.
I’m glad I’ve reduced my time on this site, because the number of truly delusional people on both sides of the arguments has multiplied exponentially recently.
Hmm, I don’t think “poor” yields dictated as much. Remember that the GPU cores in M3 add three new features that all eat silicon space too, so I would assume that is the main reason the number of GPU cores didn’t go up much.
I do wonder what the silicon budget will be for M4, but I’m not convinced that N3E will buy much.
this is the same story as the iphone. people claim that the new iphone isn't that much faster or efficient depsite being 3nm. that's why i didn't expect much from macs.
that said. benchmarks and numbers are just that. none of it has any impact on the end user experience. we need to see some real world comparisons to know.
that said. benchmarks and numbers are just that. none of it has any impact on the end user experience. we need to see some real world comparisons to know.
Fair enough. The power budget also needs to be taken into account.
Macbooks haven't been selling well, my guess is because so many upgraded to the M1 during the pandemic or just after (including me) and it is fantastic. There is no reason for me to upgrade my M1 14" yet, I need 2 screens and push it hard but not to the extent it is capable of. Perhaps they manufactured too many 14" bodies anticipating more M2 sales, so these are now being used for the bottom end M3 MacBook Pro replacing the 13" Touch Bar one, though personally I don't regard a laptop with 8Gb RAM that can only drive one screen a "Pro" machine. If you pay to upgrade it to 16GB then the price is too close to the M3 Pro to make it worth buying.
also the premise of this topic is that the m3 is inferior. Inferior to what? Clearly not the M2. There is measureable and significant performance gains on the M3. Is it inferior to a product apple could've launched next summer? sure. but that is *always* true.
That's a pretty consistent attitude. If the next generation looks underwhelming, and especially if it looks underwhelming, the previous generation becomes more attractive, if you can get a good discount for it. And the same can happen every year with a new product generation.
A lot depends on the product tier you are considering. The full Mx Max is effectively the Apple equivalent of the i9. It's the default chip with all features available and enabled. Everything below it is a watered-down version of the default, with some features removed or disabled to justify a lower price point. While the Mx Max is the best chip Apple can make, everything below it is a compromise made for commercial reasons. Sometimes the compromise is good and sometimes it's bad, but you are always buying an inferior product.
The M2 Max was a major upgrade over the M1 Max. In addition to the usual generation-to-generation improvements, you got a 50% increase in RAM and an almost 20% increase in the number of GPU cores. The M3 Max was an even bigger upgrade, with a 50% increase in the number of P-cores and a 33% increase in RAM. But if you were looking at lower-tier products or didn't bother maxing out RAM, you didn't see the full benefits from the new product generation.