M3 w/ 24 GB versus M3 Pro w/ 18 GB?

[Moreplease]

In terms of noise, reviewers tend to say the M3 Pro is both quieter and cooler during testing. Check this one out:

M3 vs M3 Pro: The Ultimate Mac Showdown

Explore the M3 vs M3 Pro dilemma — clear comparisons, smart insights, and easy choices for your next tech upgrade!

medium.com

That’s a very useful summary of the differences. Thanks.

I did notice one inconsistency. He showed scores of 710 and 865 for the Cinebench 2024 CPU Test and then wrote:

“The M3 Pro scored 35% higher in Cinebench 2024. This is because the M3 was throttling with that single fan, not being able to sustain the performance.”

But 865 is only 22% higher than 710. That smaller difference removes any strong indication of thermal throttling, to my mind. And there was no evidence of more throttling with the M3 than the M3 Pro in the other tests either.

But if the M3 was noisier than the M3 Pro under load, that’s certainly a consideration for me. And clearly the M3 Pro is a bit faster across the board.

If you're afraid you'll be absolutely hammering the RAM, then 6GB difference might help, but it's not a big difference. Maybe 36GB would be safer for you, despite the horrendous $400/£400 upgrade bill. 😬

I’m still considering that as an unlikely option, but realistically I would have to sell a lens or something to fund that. Maybe. With all that money in a laptop, I’d be afraid of wrecking it in some accident before I got 5+ years of use out of it.

 

[Sami13496]

It’s a good point even if made in fun. Couple of reasons to prefer the Pro screen though:

• I guess I should figure out HDR before I get left behind
• I assumed the Pro has a wider colour gamut than the Air although I haven’t checked the details
• And I’d like the ProMotion for better motion cadence with 24p video, which seems to be an atypical reason to want ProMotion. Though I see other commenters have now thrown up new concerns about whether ProMotion is worth much with slow pixels. Gee …

If I was choosing between Air and Pro I wouldn’t pay any attention on what marketing or spec sheet says. I would just look at both and decided by gut feeling do I really care about the differences I possibly see between those two screens to get the Pro over Air. If the Air form factor is what I really want. So the question for me would be, does the possible difference in screen in real life matter to me to make the trade off. In other words, I would not let marketing, spec sheet or other people decide what things are most important to me when making a buying decision. For others it might be the screen, sure, or maximizing value on paper. For me it would be what I prefer, could just be based on feeling, and that’s perfectly fine. But that is just me.

 

[throAU]

Oof. I had no idea about this.

Maybe you’re the person to ask. The only reason I’m interested in ProMotion is for smoother 24p video playback. My wife has a big iPhone with ProMotion that has noticeably better motion cadence with 24p video than any of my devices (2019 21.5-inch Retina 4K iMac, ancient iPad, iPhone 13 mini). So that was appealing. Do these slow pixels rule that out too?

a 120hz display with promotion can play 24 FPS properly (divide 120fps by 5 evenly and you get evenly paced frames). ditto for 30 fps, 60 fps.

a 60hz panel can not.

Also the grey to grey latency thing.... maybe that's a thing, but i've had my promotion m1 pro macbook pro for 2 years or thereabouts now and the panel is certainly better than that on the air - does HDR for a start...

The only thing you might notice (i haven't) with the slower grey to grey is that if some parts of the frame change repeatedly from light to dark then... i dunno... maybe you'll see it? In general use the 120hz is fine.

For pixels that aren't going min->max brightness or whatever you probably won't notice, and the vast majority of the frame in most video is very similar to the previous frame in any case.


TLDR: i doubt you'll see any problems with the ProMotion display in reality, despite what benchmark tests may indicate.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I’m planning to get a 14-inch MacBook Pro.

I wish it was a sexy Air instead, but the better display and ProMotion are important to me and don’t seem likely to arrive in the M3 Air in the spring (but if they do I’ll really kick myself).

Options I’m considering are:

1. M3 with 16 GB
2. M3 with 24 GB
3. M3 Pro with 18 GB

… and after that, the European Apple prices get too silly.

All 512 GB because I’ll need external storage anyway.

•••

The heavy part of my workload is DxO PhotoLab and DaVinci Resolve.

I have no worries about PhotoLab, because I know someone who runs it fine on an Air with 8 GB of RAM with camera files bigger than mine (mine are 24 megapixels).

Resolve I use less, and I don’t use Fusion. My sources files are mainly 4K 8-bit 4:2:0 H.264.

I’m not sure what drives memory usage in Resolve: is it source file size, 10-bit files, timeline resolution, project length, project complexity, something else?

Whatever. My Resolve work is pretty basic. I don’t use a tenth of the app’s power and abilities.

•••

My options 2 and 3, above, are about the same price. An additional consideration is that option 1 (M3 with 16 GB) is available at a particularly attractive discount right now, making it a lot cheaper than 2 or 3.

But if I get the entry-level M3, it would be nice to max out the RAM to 24 GB. Because (a) it would be fun to have a top-of-the-range M3, (b) with only 512 GB of storage, I wouldn’t want to waste the NAND life writing swap files, and (c) although 16 > 24 GB is a 50% increase, the amount available for apps after system overhead, etc., would increase by more than 50% (applies even more to the 8 > 16 GB upgrade that additionally gives a 100% increase).

But the M3 Pro with 18 GB is almost the same price as the M3 with 24 GB. And I have a feeling the M3 Pro would be faster in the real world for many tasks even with less memory.

But do I need faster than fast enough? Clearly not. I need RAM so that fast enough doesn’t suddenly become downright slow when it hits the swap.

And if I was considering a Mac with 18 GB of RAM, realistically 16 GB would do about as well. And then we’re back to the entry-level M3 and saving hundreds of euros.

•••

Put me out of this miserable loop.

IMO every one of your choices is too low RAM. Get #2 if those are your choices, but I would recommend getting an M2 chip if that allowed you to get more RAM in your price range.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

If I was choosing between Air and Pro I wouldn’t pay any attention on what marketing or spec sheet says. I would just look at both and decided by gut feeling do I really care about the differences I possibly see between those two screens to get the Pro over Air. If the Air form factor is what I really want. So the question for me would be, does the possible difference in screen in real life matter to me to make the trade off. In other words, I would not let marketing, spec sheet or other people decide what things are most important to me when making a buying decision. For others it might be the screen, sure, or maximizing value on paper. For me it would be what I prefer, could just be based on feeling, and that’s perfectly fine. But that is just me.

Yes, just you.

IMO specs are critical and the MBP has superior specs in every regard. Some specs can matter a lot over the life cycle of a new box. Even if you personally do not care about the better display and speakers, things like WiFi 6E, the ability to drive more external displays, more ports, more available RAM, etc. are huge to many folks (me).

 

[leifp]

Do you (or might you) attach external monitors? The Pro is superior then. For example, the M3 supports 4K120 over HDMI while the M3Pro supports 8k60/4k240 over HDMI. It also supports multiple monitors better.

 

[ric22]

TLDR: i doubt you'll see any problems with the ProMotion display in reality, despite what benchmark tests may indicate.

Try comparing it to fast refresh rate monitors... side by side it doesn't look great, to my eyes, in terms of motion handling (or to the eyes of reviewers that have done the same).

 

[okkibs]

Which made me wonder if maybe the real difference is 8 GB versus 18 GB of always-powered RAM.

Makes no difference.

The only reason I’m interested in ProMotion is for smoother 24p video playback. My wife has a big iPhone with ProMotion that has noticeably better motion cadence with 24p video than any of my devices (2019 21.5-inch Retina 4K iMac, ancient iPad, iPhone 13 mini). So that was appealing. Do these slow pixels rule that out too?

For this to work the app you use for playback needs to support ProMotion. Keep that in mind. Apps can make use of adaptive refresh rate and for 24fps video they could then set the refresh rate to 48Hz for example, but if they don't implement it then the app is stuck at 60Hz. I do not think video players on MacOS use this. I might be mistaken but googling for vlc got me no results and for iina there is an open request to implement this feature. Apple TV+ might support it. I can't tell just by looking at it.

Trouble is I put 64 GB in my iMac because it was so cheap.

You can still check the activity monitor to see how much of that you are using. Relevant is the "memory used" value.

 

[Moreplease]

IMO every one of your choices is too low RAM. Get #2 if those are your choices, but I would recommend getting an M2 chip if that allowed you to get more RAM in your price range.

I don’t have access to M2 MacBook Pros because I need a CTO build to get a British keyboard in a mainland European country.

So to follow your advice would leave me with an entry price of €3000 (cheapest MacBook Pro option with more than 24 GB of RAM). Seems excessive, especially since I know some people have been editing 10-bit video on M1 MacBook Airs from the day they arrived. That computer made a big splash in the video community because of its performance especially with video decode/encode … with at most 16 GB of RAM.

Of course in an ideal world I would have 96 GB like you. Not going to happen on this go around.

 

[Moreplease]

Do you (or might you) attach external monitors?

I don’t, though I would like to retain that option for the future. However, certainly not more than one external display.

The Pro is superior then. For example, the M3 supports 4K120 over HDMI while the M3Pro supports 8k60/4k240 over HDMI. It also supports multiple monitors better.

Noted.

 

[throAU]

Try comparing it to fast refresh rate monitors... side by side it doesn't look great, to my eyes, in terms of motion handling (or to the eyes of reviewers that have done the same).

Try comparing the alternative being discussed, the MBA to high refresh monitors??
Try comparing the high refresh monitor's HDR support?

Horses for courses, if you want a high refresh rate display for twitch gaming or whatever - plug one in.

 

[geta]

Yes, just you.

IMO specs are critical and the MBP has superior specs in every regard. Some specs can matter a lot over the life cycle of a new box. Even if you personally do not care about the better display and speakers, things like WiFi 6E, the ability to drive more external displays, more ports, more available RAM, etc. are huge to many folks (me).

Unless you are one of these that need to showoff you having the latest and the greatest… It's only matters if you really need these features for your work/daily usage, if not, its waste of money.

 

[throAU]

My options 2 and 3, above, are about the same price. An additional consideration is that option 1 (M3 with 16 GB) is available at a particularly attractive discount right now, making it a lot cheaper than 2 or 3.

But if I get the entry-level M3, it would be nice to max out the RAM to 24 GB. Because (a) it would be fun to have a top-of-the-range M3, (b) with only 512 GB of storage, I wouldn’t want to waste the NAND life writing swap files, and (c) although 16 > 24 GB is a 50% increase, the amount available for apps after system overhead, etc., would increase by more than 50% (applies even more to the 8 > 16 GB upgrade that additionally gives a 100% increase).

But the M3 Pro with 18 GB is almost the same price as the M3 with 24 GB. And I have a feeling the M3 Pro would be faster in the real world for many tasks even with less memory.

Back to the OP:

The M3 and M3 pro will be same speed in most daily usage honestly. Because most normal enduser workloads do not scale to the number of cores in the Pro. I'm a power user running multiple VMs and a heap of background apps and the M1 Pro I use rarely needs to use the last 4 of its performance cores. I rarely see more than 6 core (2E + 2P) cores getting pegged unless I'm running a render or some other long term multicore workload.

Unless you're doing sustained multi core workloads, the processors are functionally identical, except the Pro has a better GPU. Which may matter to you? If you run games or plan to run games at all get the Pro - gaming performance will be massively better with the better GPU!

The Pro screen is better
The Pro speakers are better
Pro has an SD reader
Pro has less battery life

So, unless you REALLY need the RAM or REALLY need the GPU (CPU irrelevant unless you're doing long running multi-core workloads) the choice is between those above things and better battery life + 8 GB of additional RAM you may or may not use.

I wouldn't worry too much about swap hitting the SSD. NAND life will be fine over 5 years, I pushed a previous gen 2015 MacBook Pro HARD with its mere 8 GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. It still works just fine today. And unless you know you need more than 16 GB of RAM, you likely don't.

Which means for me.... I'd base the selection on ports, screen (which you will literally look at every time you use the machine), speakers and form factor.

Do you want a smaller lighter machine, or a better screen, better speakers and more external monitor support, more ports and an SD slot?

Think of the things you'll use every day (e.g., maybe an air is better for you because battery life is important?), vs. on paper spec you may never see a benefit from.

 

[lukispooky]

The base version of the MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 SoC only uses a PCIe 3.0 interface instead of PCIe 4.0 on models with the M3 Pro or M3 Max

So the 512GB M3 Pro SSD should be approximately twice as fast as the regular 512GB M3 SSD. This means a faster swap on M3 Pro, which partly offsets the lower RAM compared to the 24GB RAM M3.

 

[ric22]

Try comparing the alternative being discussed, the MBA to high refresh monitors??
Try comparing the high refresh monitor's HDR support?

Horses for courses, if you want a high refresh rate display for twitch gaming or whatever - plug one in.

I said what I was comparing them to, precisely. I don't need to repeat that. Why mention the MacBook Air? We were also talking about the quality of the screens and their features.

The point being that the MBP monitors can barely be described as "real" 120hz monitors, because they cannot refresh at that speed. It isn't about twitch gaming, it's about doing its advertised job competently. They're miles and miles from being "twitch gaming" suitable, and I'm not expecting that from them. They'll still be better than the MBA if that's all you're interested in.

Edit: I'll find a link to a thread on this forum all about the subject.

M3 worse pixel response times

Any thoughts on the issue that M3 Macbook pros have worse pixel response times than the M2s? So far I´ve only seen a review of the m3 14" that tested pixel response time with worse results from 35ms to 69ms almost doubling the delay. Why are the screens still advertised as 120hz but the pixel...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[ric22]

As a bonus screen point- the edge shadow still annoys me after a couple of years with a work MacBook Pro.

 

[Sami13496]

Yes, just you.

IMO specs are critical and the MBP has superior specs in every regard. Some specs can matter a lot over the life cycle of a new box. Even if you personally do not care about the better display and speakers, things like WiFi 6E, the ability to drive more external displays, more ports, more available RAM, etc. are huge to many folks (me).

If one needs those specs to perform work then sure. But what I understood from OP’s post, is that they could do all their work on Air (which they like more!) but considering Pro just because of the screen. So my advice would be - look at the screens - ignore the spec sheet. If can’t see & feel enough difference maybe the Air is the one after all. In this particular case it’s a trade off between “sexy Air” and Pro’s screen, isn’t it? I don’t think someone else (e.g. you) needing the ports should matter in OP’s purchasing desicion.

 

[ric22]

Looking at both the Air and Pro screens at once, I personally don't find enough of a difference for it to be worth paying for. The darker blacks are nicer, sure (despite a little blooming), but unless you're in a darkened room watching a movie, does it matter much?

I much prefer the Pro speakers, though, they're a bit crappy on the smaller M2 Air (poorer than M1 Air). I haven't tested the 15" Air.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Unless you are one of these that need to showoff you having the latest and the greatest… It's only matters if you really need these features for your work/daily usage, if not, its waste of money.

To make your comment more accurate, it only matters if you really need these features at some time during the intended life cycle of the planned new box, if not, its waste of money. This applies especially to RAM. Or you can just accept a shortened life cycle. That is fine if that is the plan.

Note that "really need" is also very subjective. Some folks, for instance, are happy to work forever with the Mac OS constantly forced to be paging to disk - - but getting the work done nevertheless. Those folks don't care (or don't know) that the computer is laboring, and is slower and less smooth than it could be; sub-optimal despite the computer's huge capabilities.

Personally IMO if I spend $thousands on a box to compute with I will also spend a few hundred more for the RAM, etc. upgrades necessary to allow that computer to operate optimally. I plan (and get) long life cycles from my Macs with them operating optimally.

Edit: Note also that an optimized computer is far more likely to cope well with something new thrown at it during its 5-10 year life cycle than a box that starts out sub-optimal will. In the world of tech computers do get new things thrown at them during their 5-10 year life cycles.

 

[Moreplease]

Makes no difference.

Source for RAM chips not using significant power on a 10+ hour timescale with a 70 Wh battery?

For this to work the app you use for playback needs to support ProMotion. Keep that in mind. Apps can make use of adaptive refresh rate and for 24fps video they could then set the refresh rate to 48Hz for example, but if they don't implement it then the app is stuck at 60Hz. I do not think video players on MacOS use this. I might be mistaken but googling for vlc got me no results and for iina there is an open request to implement this feature. Apple TV+ might support it. I can't tell just by looking at it.

I see. Thanks for the warning. More to research then. ProMotion was one of the main reasons I was looking at the Pro instead of the Air – though now that I’ve done all the reading, I’d also prefer an M3 chip to an M2.

You can still check the activity monitor to see how much of that you are using. Relevant is the "memory used" value.

Looks like 12–17 GB “memory used” for PhotoLab and a bit less for Resolve, if I close other apps (and I’m willing to do that, which I suppose is unusual).

That’s not jiving with voices saying I need 36 GB minimum. Maybe “memory used” values go up with longer use of the app – I just worked for a few minutes and didn’t explore every possibility, some of which may use more RAM. And this is Intel memory usage, I say again. Not sure to what extent that matters, given that my Intel Mac does have separate graphics memory.

But I’m starting to think any of the three options I mentioned would work for me, including the cheapest one (base M3 with 16 GB). Not as nicely as an M3 Pro with 36 GB, no doubt, but maybe good enough for my fairly modest requirements and possibly low expectations compared to some of you power users. On the other hand, I do hope to keep this for five years.

 

[smirking]

Depending on what you're doing, you may find that hitting the swap isn't really going to hammer your performance the way you think it will. I had to use an 8GB loaner base M1 for a few weeks a few years ago I simultaneously ran Capture One Pro, a VM, programming tools, 2 or 3 Web browser programs and all the usuals like Mail.

There were some minor blips, but with few exceptions, I barely noticed anything amiss even though the memory pressure chart was as ugly as I've ever seen it.

The worst was when I tried to run Windows 10 on Parallels, leaving only 6GB of RAM left and it was mostly Windows that suffered. I was actually still able to use the Mac side... on 6GB with a virtual server running in the background to boot.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Back to the OP:

The M3 and M3 pro will be same speed in most daily usage honestly. Because most normal enduser workloads do not scape to the number of cores in the Pro. I'm a power user running multiple VMs and a heap of background apps and the M1 Pro I use rarely needs to use the last 4 of its performance cores. I rarely see more than 6 core (2E + 2P) cores getting pegged unless I'm running a render or some other long term multicore workload.

Unless you're doing sustained multi core workloads, the processors are functionally identical, except the Pro has a better GPU. Which may matter to you? If you run games or plan to run games at all get the Pro - gaming performance will be massively better with the better GPU!

The Pro screen is better
The Pro speakers are better
Pro has an SD reader
Pro has less battery life

So, unless you REALLY need the RAM or REALLY need the GPU (CPU irrelevant unless you're doing long running multi-core workloads) the choice is between those above things and better battery life + 8 GB of additional RAM you may or may not use.

I wouldn't worry too much about swap hitting the SSD. NAND life will be fine over 5 years, I pushed a previous gen 2015 MacBook Pro HARD with its mere 8 GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. It still works just fine today. And unless you know you need more than 16 GB of RAM, you likely don't.

Which means for me.... I'd base the selection on ports, screen (which you will literally look at every time you use the machine), speakers and form factor.

Do you want a smaller lighter machine, or a better screen, better speakers and more external monitor support, more ports and an SD slot?

Think of the things you'll use every day (e.g., maybe an air is better for you because battery life is important?), vs. on paper spec you may never see a benefit from.

Good commentary. However IMO the reference to "better battery life + 8 GB of additional RAM you may or may not use" is a bit off base, because
A) battery life on all modern Mac laptops is so good that IMO differences among them are moot; and
B) because the OP usage will use more RAM.

Image apps basically will take advantage of whatever RAM is available; today's usages fitting under 64 GB very well for me. I have 96 GB M2 and usage sits at 45-55 GB most of the time. That is largely because my workflow bounces among multiple apps (Safari, Filemaker, Affinity, Mail, etc.). The ability to do that smoothly w/o hiccups hours at a time is of huge value to me.

 

[throAU]

Good commentary. However IMO the reference to "better battery life + 8 GB of additional RAM you may or may not use" is a bit off base, because
A) battery life on all modern Mac laptops is so good that IMO differences among them are moot; and
B) because the OP usage will use more RAM.

Image apps basically will take advantage of whatever RAM is available; today's usages fitting under 64 GB very well for me. I have 96 GB M2 and usage sits at 45-55 GB most of the time. That is largely because my workflow bounces among multiple apps (Safari, Filemaker, Affinity, Mail, etc.). The ability to do that smoothly w/o hiccups hours at a time is of huge value to me.

I do that sort of workload smoothly including 2x VMs in 16 GB.

Just because memory is “used” doesn’t mean it is necessary.

It’s diminishing returns, seriously.

If you had a mac with 1/2 TB of ram and kept it powered up long enough it would eventually utilise all of the ram as cache (assuming you were regularly reading and writing to an SSD with more than 500 GB consumed) - because the OS has no other use for it.

That doesn’t mean you look at activity monitor, see 500 GB consumed and conclude “i need 500 GB of ram!”.


NOTE (before the peanut gallery get carried away):

I am NOT saying nobody needs huge amounts of RAM. I am saying you need to correctly measure your memory usage and a huge number of people mis-read activity monitor. It is NOT as simple as reading off the “used” memory reading.

This is why the memory pressure graph exists - to simplify analysis of the metrics available. Even if you understand modern OS memory management, the memory pressure graph is a much quicker way of monitoring memory consumption on a modern mac (and likely includes metrics most people don’t even know how to measure inside of activity monitor, that aren’t displayed by default).

 

[Moreplease]

Options I’m considering are:

1. M3 with 16 GB
2. M3 with 24 GB
3. M3 Pro with 18 GB

[…]

All 512 GB because I’ll need external storage anyway.

Well, for anyone still interested, I went with unlisted option 4: M3 Pro with 36 GB.

Not what I had in mind going into this.

It feels rock ’n’ roll to spend that much dough on a computer, but at least I’ll not regret the memory amount.

If I could have got the entry-level M3 with 32 or 36 GB of RAM, I probably would have (may be why Apple doesn’t offer that).

Alas, this did mean I had to promise myself I would sell one of my least-used camera lenses. And I will. But I haven’t used that lens in months, whereas I use my computer every day. It makes some sense.

Excited to be boarding the Apple Silicon hype train at last. My 2019 iMac purchase was awkwardly timed.

 

[leifp]

Ha! Enjoy