M3 Max to last longer or M3 Pro and upgrade sooner

[Goat57]

Just a quick one hopefully!!

Decided to get 2nd, more powerful machine, various reasons, will be the primary machine. Used for work & gaming.

Realistically, M3 Pro runs everything, but room to improve graphic settings on games. Thus, it is not a case that the M3 Max is needed to earn money, but the benefit would be noticeable and appreciated for home use. Work is unintensive on hardware. For gaming, having more than double the GPU cores seems good.

Budget exists for either but M3 Max would need to last longer, so amortised cost is the same. Hope this makes sense.

So: is it preferable to buy..

M3 Pro (12 CPU, 18 GPU), upgrade in 2-3 years,

M3 Max (16 CPU, 40 GPU), upgrade in 4-5 years.

I guess this requires future telling, to know if the M3 Max will still outperform the M6/M7 Pro. Anyway, interested to know peoples thoughts.

Thank you.

 

[ChrisA]

Maybe what might happen is that some future Mac will not just be faster but have some feature that is not present in today's macs. Perhaps a "version 2.0" of the neural network core or a new kind of interconnect cable that allows to build a clusters of Mac that can act together as if itwere one larger computer. Who knows what Apple might do.

I'm not so optimistic. With the M1 to M2 and M2 to M3 transition we saw about a 20% increase in single-cor performance and that fast rate of increase can't continue forever. The jumps in performance will get smaller over time as the technology matures.

So Apple might introduce new features. Who knws what, voice processing hardware, eye trackers, ???

 

[picpicmac]

I guess this requires future telling

Yes, it does.

As ChrisA noted, future Macs may incorporate functionality that is not in today's Macs.

Furthermore, we don't know where the AVP is going or how it will (or if it will) affect the future of Apple's computing platforms. Or how it will affect the future of gaming. AR and VR are still in transition and the future of "gaming" may be different than what you expect.

If you really just want a machine for gaming, why not buy a gaming PC?

 

[PeteBurgh]

If you really just want a machine for gaming, why not buy a gaming PC?

Absolutely this.

Given how limited gaming remains on the Mac, spending a huge extra premium for the Max seems an...unwise way to spend money.

Especially if you specced up the MacBooks (that RAM and storage gets really expensive really fast) you could get the M3 Pro AND a decent 1440p gaming PC AND a PS5 (or a Steam Deck, Switch, Xbox as you wish) for less than the M3 Max alone, the former set-up giving OP vastly more gaming power and versatility. Or simply the M3 Pro plus a much better gaming PC.

To my mind, the M3 Max fills a very specific niche for a small number people with very high performance needs. Great that it exists! But for everyone else, it's marginal/barely noticeable gains for a very high cost.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Fully agree on the PC recommendations. Stuff like powerful CPU, RAM, SSD are much less expensive (through the wonder of competition) there and gaming is abundant. Furthermore, games you buy for PC will likely not be broken in a few years by Apple deciding to adjust some framework again. And if you want AAA, there's no contest.

Use the existing (first) Mac to do your (not demanding) work, a modest (relative) budget to get yourself a powerful PC and then save the rest for an M4 or M5 in a few years where you could revisit PRO vs. MAX again.

 

[JustAnExpat]

As of right now, all of the Mx series have all the features, and there aren't any machines with reduced features - yet.

My opinion is that the Max series are for people who use MacBooks (and Macs) for production purposes, stuff like rendering videos and other computation tasks. Generally this is purchased for employment/ work, and the value is written off on taxes. I expect these machines to be replaced between three to five years (because of the tax write off laws).

The Pro series are for people who want the best consumer class machines. I expect these machines to be supported for about 10 years, for new versions of the operating system and security patches.

 

[MajorFubar]

The M3 series chips will all be obsoleted at the exact same time, whenever that is. Never ever buy a computer that's over-specified for your current-to-midterm needs using the justification that it will just last longer. It doesn't work like that anymore because of enforced obsolescence. Otherwise I'd still be using my 2011 i7 27" iMac.

 

[twanj]

The difference between M3 Pro and Max is $620 for MBP.

Over 4 years, that's $155 per year. 5 years is $124 or roughly 34 cents per day.

It's much more expensive to buy 2 computers, with the second one having unknown performance.

 

[kzly]

Buy what you need TODAY, not for future. I don't think one config will depreciate more than the other. It sounds like you will be okay with m3 pro (people who desperately need m3 max know they can't afford to even look at m3 pro specs), so I suggest do m3 pro now and when you desperately need all the power, upgrade to whatever m series max chip.

 

[Paul Deemer]

Just a quick one hopefully!!

Decided to get 2nd, more powerful machine, various reasons, will be the primary machine. Used for work & gaming.

Realistically, M3 Pro runs everything, but room to improve graphic settings on games. Thus, it is not a case that the M3 Max is needed to earn money, but the benefit would be noticeable and appreciated for home use. Work is unintensive on hardware. For gaming, having more than double the GPU cores seems good.

Budget exists for either but M3 Max would need to last longer, so amortised cost is the same. Hope this makes sense.

So: is it preferable to buy..

M3 Pro (12 CPU, 18 GPU), upgrade in 2-3 years,

M3 Max (16 CPU, 40 GPU), upgrade in 4-5 years.

I guess this requires future telling, to know if the M3 Max will still outperform the M6/M7 Pro. Anyway, interested to know peoples thoughts.

Thank you.

Why not do what I did in same situation and get the 14 CPU 30 GPU? It's a middle ground between Pro and Fat Max. The bandwidth doubles from 150 to 300, you get 4 more performance cores and 12 more GPU's over the Pro. The Max also comes with 2 video encoders and 2 decoders and the Pro only has 1 of each.