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M3 Pro has lower memory bandwith than M1/M2 Pro?
- Thread starter Ascn
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The vanilla M? series SOC's always have less bandwidth than the Pro, Max, and Ultra SOCs. The M3 > M2 > M1. You need to compare the M3 Pro > M2 Pro > M1 Pro, etc.... Hope this helps 
Rich S.
Update: Info is not relevant to OP's post. Sorry :-(
Let's make this post useful. Looking at the 'offical' specs page here: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
You can see that the M3 Pro only has the previously mentioned 150GBs of bandwidth, and even the 14" with the binned Max option only has 300GBs. However, if you click on the 16" option on that page, and check the 16" with the full Max configuration (16 Core CPU and 40 Core GPU), it has the expected 400GBs. Looks like Apple is cost cutting on the lower-tiered SOCs. What is going to be interesting, is how this impacts GPU performance. Maybe Apple discovered that in the lower configurations, the extra 50 GB/s of bandwidth wasn't utilized, and reduced it for cost reasons?
Rich S.
Update: Info is not relevant to OP's post. Sorry :-(
Let's make this post useful. Looking at the 'offical' specs page here: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
You can see that the M3 Pro only has the previously mentioned 150GBs of bandwidth, and even the 14" with the binned Max option only has 300GBs. However, if you click on the 16" option on that page, and check the 16" with the full Max configuration (16 Core CPU and 40 Core GPU), it has the expected 400GBs. Looks like Apple is cost cutting on the lower-tiered SOCs. What is going to be interesting, is how this impacts GPU performance. Maybe Apple discovered that in the lower configurations, the extra 50 GB/s of bandwidth wasn't utilized, and reduced it for cost reasons?
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Apparently the M3 Pro has less bandwidth than the M2 Pro. Same with M3 Max vs M2 Max. We are comparing within classes here (150 GB/s vs 200 and 300 vs 400)The vanilla M? series SOC's always have less bandwidth than the Pro, Max, and Ultra SOCs. The M3 > M2 > M1. You need to compare the M3 Pro > M2 Pro > M1 Pro, etc.... Hope this helps
Rich S.
He's showing people which configuration they should be buying presumably to maximise performance per dollar.
This post sums it up perfectly
And here I thought the M3 was going to be the chip to get. I hope this recent Qualcomm chip announcement lights a fire under Apple's ass so that the M4 is worthwhile.
This keynote's target audience is M1 and Intel iMac owners they kept comparing the new chip performance to M1 they know M2 users won't be upgrading for at least another 2 product cycles M4 or M5.
In the keynote Apple said M3 Pro has a 20% CPU performance improvement over M1 Pro. The M2 Pro also had a 20% performance improvement over M1 Pro. For M3, and M3 Max Apple provided a comparison with the equivalent M2, but not for M3 Pro. It seems M3 Pro has no CPU performance improvements over M2 Pro, presumably because of the change to 6+6 cores.
Well that’s interesting. Didn’t know they cut back on the Max too. Real world comparisons will be interesting, but the GOU in the M3 is a lot more powerful and advanced, maybe with its extra built in hardware acceleration it doesn’t need as fast a memory bus to move the data. tween CPU and GPU? If that’s how it works?
The memory bus is where data is moved, although not between CPU and GPU as with unified memory they each have direct access to whatever is in memory. Performance may not take a hit thanks to dynamic caching which could reduce the amount of data that's needed to be moved.
Really feels like they intentionally downgraded the Pro chip to drive people to get the Max chip.
Apples recent tendency to intentionally cripple performance to create product segmentation really bother me.
Things were so clear with the M1 and M2. If you needed a better GPU, you went with Max. If not you go Pro. Now it is all a mess.
People who need a better CPU don’t necessarily always need a better GPU.
Thanks, that is what I was thinking of was caching. Guess the only way to know is to see real world comparisons.
I'm willing to wait for actual testing on this, while I haven't been too happy about Apple taking steps backward with "upgrades" it may not be as big a deal in real world testing as on paper.