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What would the M3 need to make you upgrade from an M1?
- Thread starter AltecX
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MBP 16" has a 100Wh battery. If it could last 10 hours, it means the power draw is only 10w. That's definitely not under load. Whole system power consumption could easily reach over 50w for a MAX chip. Under stress, MBP 16 may only last 2 to 3 hours, depending on the load.
Bummer. Not having a Macbook Pro since a 2017 model, maybe I was listening to the hype too much.
Biggest update Apple could do is to give 12GB ram in base. No much point waiting for M3 Air this year for me, and it means that even theoretical budget MacBook will cost something like $700+$200 for 16gb.
There is just no good value since M1 Air and base M1 Pro with potential $500 deal, when you want more than 8gb ram.
There is just no good value since M1 Air and base M1 Pro with potential $500 deal, when you want more than 8gb ram.
Personally I'm conflicted.
On the one hand, the M3 Max is looking like a nice, albeit expensive, upgrade over my M1 Max.
On the other hand, I was kinda hoping I'd be able to side grade to an M3 Pro and not lose much, but Apple really cut down the Pros (less P cores, less memory bandwidth, only 18GB Ram), and aside from an HDMI 2.1 port, there isn't much interesting going on on the IO/chassis side.
Furthermore, even if I wanted to go big, the new tiering system for the M3 Max (2 less P cores, 3/4 memory bandwidth, 3/4 GPU cores) is also pretty bleh.
Given that pricing is pretty insane in Japan because of the weak yen, I'll probably stick with my M1 Max for the time being unless I can snag an absolutely fantastic deal this holiday season or Santa's feeling generous...
(Although I'll probably pick up a base model M3 Pro to test drive and see if a side grade to the 36GB M3 Pro would be doable/worth it)
On the bright side, summer / holiday 2024 discounts on the base 14 M3 Max MBP will hopefully bring it down to a more reasonable level (and maybe the Yen will have recovered a bit by then...)
On the one hand, the M3 Max is looking like a nice, albeit expensive, upgrade over my M1 Max.
On the other hand, I was kinda hoping I'd be able to side grade to an M3 Pro and not lose much, but Apple really cut down the Pros (less P cores, less memory bandwidth, only 18GB Ram), and aside from an HDMI 2.1 port, there isn't much interesting going on on the IO/chassis side.
Furthermore, even if I wanted to go big, the new tiering system for the M3 Max (2 less P cores, 3/4 memory bandwidth, 3/4 GPU cores) is also pretty bleh.
Given that pricing is pretty insane in Japan because of the weak yen, I'll probably stick with my M1 Max for the time being unless I can snag an absolutely fantastic deal this holiday season or Santa's feeling generous...
(Although I'll probably pick up a base model M3 Pro to test drive and see if a side grade to the 36GB M3 Pro would be doable/worth it)
On the bright side, summer / holiday 2024 discounts on the base 14 M3 Max MBP will hopefully bring it down to a more reasonable level (and maybe the Yen will have recovered a bit by then...)
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I have a M2 Max MBP 16" and I'm pretty happy with it.
However, the pixel response times of the display are absolute **** tier stuff. It's not fast enough for 60 Hz and definitely not for 120 Hz. It is one of the best HDR displays of any kind on the market, but it does that by sacrificing pixel response times to a degree that makes it a real blurfest in motion. While this isn't a huge problem for desktop use, it is still a problem.
So to me improving pixel response times to at least "good enough for 60 Hz" levels should have been a priority for M3 models. Instead they seem to have just made it brighter?
I get my machine from work so for me the price is not an issue, but I have a really hard time buying Apple stuff with my own money because of the nickle and diming for RAM and especially disk space.
The pricing of the 16" M3 Pro/Max models looks absolutely nuts in Finland. The M3 Max with 48 GB/1 TB costs nearly 5000 euros and upgrading to 64 GB it goes over that. My M2 Max 64 GB/1 TB model was I think something like 4700 euros at the start of 2023. So for M3 Max you are paying more for less RAM and most likely very little performance difference.
To me that money should buy 64 GB/2 TB configuration at this point. It's not like RAM or disk space actually costs hundreds of euros like Apple wants to charge for it.
However, the pixel response times of the display are absolute **** tier stuff. It's not fast enough for 60 Hz and definitely not for 120 Hz. It is one of the best HDR displays of any kind on the market, but it does that by sacrificing pixel response times to a degree that makes it a real blurfest in motion. While this isn't a huge problem for desktop use, it is still a problem.
So to me improving pixel response times to at least "good enough for 60 Hz" levels should have been a priority for M3 models. Instead they seem to have just made it brighter?
I get my machine from work so for me the price is not an issue, but I have a really hard time buying Apple stuff with my own money because of the nickle and diming for RAM and especially disk space.
The pricing of the 16" M3 Pro/Max models looks absolutely nuts in Finland. The M3 Max with 48 GB/1 TB costs nearly 5000 euros and upgrading to 64 GB it goes over that. My M2 Max 64 GB/1 TB model was I think something like 4700 euros at the start of 2023. So for M3 Max you are paying more for less RAM and most likely very little performance difference.
To me that money should buy 64 GB/2 TB configuration at this point. It's not like RAM or disk space actually costs hundreds of euros like Apple wants to charge for it.
thankfully M1 is still fast and responsive enough so yes I will stick with M1
and return to Monterey OS.
my 2 cents, a price reduction form yesterday
is running on air now.
they seem like nothin can stop them and deservingly so since they performed a U turn since 2018
there is nothing wrong with last night presentation.
they over bragged some topics and bent the truth about "great" sales of th iMac (over 1 million) bing a success.
and I realized the MBP base price drip was a price hike instead.
seems to me we have these negative seeds in our brans were as a while we cant accept anything anymore good or bad.
I fell for this negative fluff in 2019
fast forward to today in expecting a Mac mini M1 which is 3 states away and a 3rd party bt KB and mouse set up for that.
yes things are not perfect, lighting is a pain in the tarkus,
the iMac is 24",
the M3 is super fast so we need to live up to these speeds at work or we will be replaced !
but the fact that we can still perform 2023 tasks with older antique outdated M1.
we should be happy for the entire eco system not just focus on the small crumbs that never fall off the table.
and return to Monterey OS.
my 2 cents, a price reduction form yesterday
is running on air now.
they seem like nothin can stop them and deservingly so since they performed a U turn since 2018
there is nothing wrong with last night presentation.
they over bragged some topics and bent the truth about "great" sales of th iMac (over 1 million) bing a success.
and I realized the MBP base price drip was a price hike instead.
seems to me we have these negative seeds in our brans were as a while we cant accept anything anymore good or bad.
I fell for this negative fluff in 2019
[I]MBAir2010[/I] Feb 25, 2019: I might might switch to linux for good.
im glad I did not perhaps Mojave turned the negative into a positive or I was finishing a freelance project using a dell XPS9370 using linux mint which was a delight compared to my MBA high Sierra.fast forward to today in expecting a Mac mini M1 which is 3 states away and a 3rd party bt KB and mouse set up for that.
yes things are not perfect, lighting is a pain in the tarkus,
the iMac is 24",
the M3 is super fast so we need to live up to these speeds at work or we will be replaced !
but the fact that we can still perform 2023 tasks with older antique outdated M1.
we should be happy for the entire eco system not just focus on the small crumbs that never fall off the table.
Microsoft is working pretty hard to make Windows 11 ARM happen in 2025. If they can get the gaming companies to port or recompile/relink and get the drivers right, then Apple may have some competition. Right now, Apple is just running away with the laptop show.
I have no urge to update My Mac Studio M1 Max. Apple shows how super-duper fast the M3 is but what they are showing is that power is only needed for certain specialized areas that most of us do not get into. really for the average user it is the 22 hour battery that is the most important signale thing. It is as important to be able to update your monitor as anything else. You can't do this on an iMac, or a Macbook. I have a thing about keyboards. The Apple Magic keyboard is only magic because they manage to get people to fork over $200 bucks for the piece of crap. There are a lot of better Apple keyboards out there for less money. Get a Keychron, save money and don't look back.
I think more base RAM would be what I would need. I'm on an M1 Pro so I don't really need to upgrade, and the fact M3 is STILL starting at 8gb is ridiculous. So I don't have a need to upgrade yet. It probably won't be until the M4 family that I leave M1 Pro.
The only thing that has given be pause is the price of the base 14" MacBook Pro, actually a little cheaper than the 12" iPad Pro I am looking at. But since the iPad will rarely move from its desktop mount I can't see having 2 Mac computers within inches of each other. The iPad with iPadOS brings in a nice addition to my Apple ecosystem. This edition is something I see everyday with My iPhone, and Apple Watch.
My M1 Pro MacBook Pro will run about 10-11 hours for casual use but more like 6 hours if I'm running my production workload. Apple says you can get 16 hours out of it. 22 hours would be another 33% so I'd get about 8 hours on battery running my production workload. Fortunately I only need to run my workload no longer than 6 1/2 hours a day.
So the battery life would be nice so that I don't have to bring a charger block and cable. But I can carry a small charger block and cable to save $3,000.
I'm partial to CoolerMaster Mechanical TKL keyboards. The only benefit of the Magic Keyboard is Touch Id.
The sad part is that 90% of users who currently have the M1 Pro/Max have absolutely no compelling need to 'upgrade' to the M3 Pro/Max. It will provide most with almost no noticeable benefit for their day to day tasks, yet its very clever Apple marketing that convinces people they 'need' that upgrade to save those few precious seconds in their day.
M1 Max here in Space Grey 2TB/64gb memory and 10/32... so while I have to see the Black in person but I may give mine to my daughter and order new one. But not before a few things answered like why the bandwidth change?
But otherwise I may go for it.
I obviously don't "need" it and trade in of $1830 isn't great... it's acceptable. And I would venture to say most of us that buy this stuff don't often upgrade based on real needs but on real "wants". I want that.
Nothing "sad" at all about that.
I mean where is this rule written that one can only upgrade based on need? I upgrade my car every 2 years because I want to not need too. Tech is no different, to each his own as long as one can afford it buy it if you wish or not.
But otherwise I may go for it.
I obviously don't "need" it and trade in of $1830 isn't great... it's acceptable. And I would venture to say most of us that buy this stuff don't often upgrade based on real needs but on real "wants". I want that.
Nothing "sad" at all about that.
I mean where is this rule written that one can only upgrade based on need? I upgrade my car every 2 years because I want to not need too. Tech is no different, to each his own as long as one can afford it buy it if you wish or not.
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Parallels? Get whichever gives you more RAM. Also, be sure the Windows apps you need to run actually work in Parallels
That's why they mentioned Intel no less than eleven times during the shortest key note ever held by Apple.
They really want those pre early 2020 Intel based Macs flushed out and the upgrade prospect for them holding out is looking great with wicked performance increases across the board for them on the fence.
Well, they didn't go far enough to make me want to get rid of my 27" iMac with 128G of RAM, not even close. I might have been in the market for a 24" iMac, I actually like 24" monitors, but it needs beefier specs for me to want to go that way. No wicked increases in performance there...
A raise in core-count and base-memory would’ve made me question the longevity of my M1 iMac. But apparently even Apple believes 8(4/4) cores deliver plenty of performance already. Not just for the entry level, but for All-in-One desktops in general. By the time I want to play a ray tracing game, I probably also want an M-Max chip. And software decoding of AV1 videos works just fine.
So neither M2 nor M3 offer a reason to "upgrade" and M4, M5 won’t either. The reasons to upgrade must come from form factor not chip technology. Since there won’t come a large iMac anytime soon, the most interesting thing right now is the new 14" MacBook Pro with M3.
So neither M2 nor M3 offer a reason to "upgrade" and M4, M5 won’t either. The reasons to upgrade must come from form factor not chip technology. Since there won’t come a large iMac anytime soon, the most interesting thing right now is the new 14" MacBook Pro with M3.
Ray tracing has been out for years in the Window world. My last 2 Radeon cards in My PC had Ray Tracing. Did I ever really notice it, no. The thing to remember if you really need it there are external Radeon, and Nvidia GPU's.