Biggest improvements in M4 (besides cheaper to make with less errors in manufacture) will be AI related. If that's a major need, it'll be worth waiting for. I think it will be an incremental improvement compared to the M2 Max to M3 Max jump.
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M3 Max Now or Wait for the M4 Max?
- Thread starter lionfleet
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On Geekbench we can see iOS M2 and Mac M2 scores are quite similar, thus iOS scores and Mac scores are valid comparisons. There are no iOS M3s to compare to, but we can use the iOS M4 scores and compare to Mac M3.
All M4 Macs should see the same 20% single core improvement. We don't know the core configurations on M4 Pro or Max, but we can assume we'd get at least a similar 13% multi-core improvement, and 13% compute.
Can we hope for more? We can compare M2Max vs M3Max improvements, vs M2 and M3. M2Max to M3Max was 10%, 41%, 6.7%. While the multicore score jump was big, the M4 is a bigger leap for both Single core and Compute. The Base M2 to M3 multicore jump was "just" 21% compared to the 41% on the Max, so the limited improvement on the base M4 isn't necessarily an indication of what we'll see on the M4 Max.
If the M4Max follows the previous generation of doubling the base multicore improvement, that would be a nice 26% jump... far better than an incremental improvement.
It's all speculation, with too many assumptions and "if"s, to say anything for certain, but I don't see any reason to not expect M4 to be decent update, even if it doesn't quite give us a 41% multicore jump.
| iOS M2 | Mac M2 | Mac M3 | iOS M4 | |
| Single | 2570 | 2578 | 3050 | 3668 |
| Multi | 9797 | 9657 | 11713 | 13276 |
| Compute (CL/Metal) | / 41267 | 25349 / 41465 | 30317 / 47303 | / 53202 |
All M4 Macs should see the same 20% single core improvement. We don't know the core configurations on M4 Pro or Max, but we can assume we'd get at least a similar 13% multi-core improvement, and 13% compute.
Can we hope for more? We can compare M2Max vs M3Max improvements, vs M2 and M3. M2Max to M3Max was 10%, 41%, 6.7%. While the multicore score jump was big, the M4 is a bigger leap for both Single core and Compute. The Base M2 to M3 multicore jump was "just" 21% compared to the 41% on the Max, so the limited improvement on the base M4 isn't necessarily an indication of what we'll see on the M4 Max.
If the M4Max follows the previous generation of doubling the base multicore improvement, that would be a nice 26% jump... far better than an incremental improvement.
It's all speculation, with too many assumptions and "if"s, to say anything for certain, but I don't see any reason to not expect M4 to be decent update, even if it doesn't quite give us a 41% multicore jump.
