Hello gentlemen,
I have been reading this thread and it seems like I could get the help I was looking for. My problem is that the use case I am facing is pretty hard to research although it’s rudimentary and simple imo.
The goal is to run several VMs (Windows and or Macos) using parallels. Inside those VMs basic stuff would be happening like office, mail, YouTube and one dedicated VM for researching whilst opening 30-40 tabs in Firefox occasionally. Another use case would be coding in python but nothing fancy. At times those VMs would run at once. Sometimes two or three simultaneously. I would say 70% of the time one VM would be running alone with a lot of tabs opened.
I am not looking at ANY content creation or video/music editing.
Now… I am coming from a windows i7 laptop where the fans are driving me crazy, any VM on its own causes the machine to heat up and working with it becomes very annoying plus it’s very laggy although 32gb ram is never an issue. To solve this problem going back to macOS became a reasonable idea since those M chips are known for their power and efficiency.
So where does my use case fall? Pro or Max category? From my understanding I need to focus on the CPU count rather than GPU cores but I wouldn’t mind extra GPU cores if I had to jump to the max due to the CPU demands. Playing games occasionally would be a nice bonus I guess.
Picking M2 or M3(both in 16” not looking for 14”): From what I have researched the issues with the M3 are the lower RAM bandwidth and the fans kicking in early. Furthermore the performance vs efficiency cores combination on the pro version was giving me a headache too, since I expect multiple VMs will benefit from more P-Cores and six won’t be satisfying the demands given? That’s why I jumped from the Pro Version to the max to have 10P instead. Apple really messed up the configuration with the M3 iteration and I am pretty sure it’s on purpose. They force me into upgrading to a configuration that I won’t need most of the time.
Alternatively I was trying to get a M2 Max (12c/38c) but those have become very rare if you don’t want to spend a premium. Plus I would like to have the 600nits out of the box.
Then I came across the Low power mode with the M3 and ended up in this forum after I had tried to contact parallels support which was a bad idea and waste of time. The incompetence was surprising to say the least.
Can you guys help me to the get a better understanding of this use case and if it’s even possible to get rid off the fan noise issue with a m3 max WITHOUT running the low power mode all the time. It bothers me to know that I am spending so much money to end up with overpowered machine I have to run in a throttled mode.
I would have picked the M3 pro but the 6P cores are simply not ok. Is it true that the M2 Max will run cooler and more silent for the same tasks? Will the 8P cores of the M2 Max be enough or better go for the 10P cores and the m3 max?
I mean some retail dealers asking 3800 euro for the 12c/38c m2 while offering the m3 14c/30c for 3700 Euro. Or just wait for the M4 end of this year hoping the pro versions will have 8P cores and more Bandwidth again?
It’s so annoying how apple handled this generation with their decision also with this fingerprint magnet color.
Some general questions:
1) Does parallels utilize performance or efficiency cores for those kind of use cases?
2) Do I have to take single core or multi core performance into account when looking at benchmarks?
3) understanding the physics behind power one would assume that more powerful cpus would always drain more watts for the same tasks by nature? Which would always lead to higher temps and more fan activities? That’s why in the past I have been buying i5 cpus even in MacBook Pros during the intel days. I hope I am not fundamentally wrong with my assumptions.