Mac mini M2 or M3? Worth to wait?

[pughimag49]

I went ahead and ordered a reconditioned Mac mini M2 Pro. It will arrive tomorrow (Friday). Saved $200. I have never had problems with Apple's reconditioned products. I bought the AppleCare pay by the year plan (About $36/year). I will wall mount the M2 on the wall and use it for my main computer in our home office. I will use the i7 Mac mini as the flight sim machine. I am using X-Plane which is a Mac app.

Found a good wall plate on Amazon (Hosanwell for $16) so after I back up my i7 Mac mini I will get ready to load up my new M2 this Friday. I'll keep you posted.

 

[i486dx2-66]

But even so, with my expectations quite modest, I must say, I was very unimpressed with the capability jump from M2 to M3 (barring the MAX or future ULTRA). The base M3 and M3 Pro are very, very paltry improvements over the M2 and M2 Pro, mainly in graphics and memory handling, but overall, nothing to write home about, IMHO.

As a working visual artist I would beg to differ. From my notes, the M2 graphics benchmarks went from (base model Mini M2) OpenCL: 28,036, Metal: 45,600 to (base model 14" MacBook Pro M3) benchmarks of OpenCL: 92,270, Metal: 153,749 which quite literally tripled.

Where did you get those numbers, @weaztek?

Geekbench agrees with your base M2 non-Pro Mini (28,130 OpenCL and 45,679 Metal at the time of this writing):

Mac mini (2023) Benchmarks - Geekbench

... but the "base model 14" MacBook Pro M3" is way off.
The base 14" MacBook Pro (M3 non-Pro 8c/10c config) only shows 30,259 OpenCL and 47,370 Metal. Which is only trivially ahead of the M2.

MacBook Pro (14-inch, Nov 2023) Benchmarks - Geekbench

To get to the numbers you quoted, you have to step up considerably.
The 14" MacBook Pro (M3 Max 16c/40c config) seems to be what you were looking at, with current scores of 92,714 OpenCL and 153,840 Metal. That's a $3,200 machine, with a chip configuration that wouldn't be available in the Mini.

MacBook Pro (14-inch, Nov 2023) Benchmarks - Geekbench

Apples-to-Apples, I think the data backs up @OldCorpse on this one.

 

[weaztek]

It seems I noted M3 Max benchmarks. Perhaps that was the only M3 Geekbench numbers up at the time, I don't know.

I do agree, the M3 Max numbers probably won't make it to the Mini.