M3 MacBook Air vs. M3 Pro MacBook Pro for LLM Development?

[smoothbit]

I can buy a refurbished M3 Pro 14" MacBook Pro for 1940€ or an M3 15" MacBook Air for 1600€, the former with 18GB RAM and the latter with 16GB.

I want to use this machine to learn how to develop LLMs and my budget maxes out at 2000€.

Would the Pro be noticeably better than the Air? Or should I save the 340€?

 

[coffeemilktea]

I think the Air would throttle pretty fast, as anything involving LLMs will have the GPU running at full power pretty quickly, unless your LLM models are very tiny.

I'd suggest the MacBook Pro.

 

[smoothbit]

I think the Air would throttle pretty fast, as anything involving LLMs will have the GPU running at full power pretty quickly, unless your LLM models are very tiny.

I'd suggest the MacBook Pro.

I forgot about the fanless Air throttling, thanks for the reminder 👍

 

[jdb8167]

I forgot about the fanless Air throttling, thanks for the reminder 👍

The benefit of the Air is that it is more portable. If that isn’t important then go for the MBP. If it is important then you can get a laptop cooler for about $25 on Amazon and get nearly the same performance as the MBP. Of course the cooler won’t be portable.