Aaronage
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Agreed. It’s not terrible, it’s great even, but Apple has set the bar so high.
Today's Apple event
- Thread starter Citysnaps
- Start date
Jimmyjames
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They could really do with supplying actual benchmark numbers. I’m critical of Qualcomm, but at least they provide something. Manipulated as it may be.
Jordanmarkstone
Member
At least we won’t have to wait 6-9 months to find out
Yoused
up
Do the math. TSMC has been burning about 50 wafers a day since March. If they are getting an average of 20 good chips off each wafer, Apple would have over two hundred thousand A17s, M3s and watch chips in hand by now (or out the door). Good turnaround time is not all that surprising. This is not the turn of the century Apple.
exoticspice1
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I kinda expected more? I mesh shaders and RT have been in NV GPUs since 2018. The fact it took Apple 5 years to bring it Mac is honestly shocking.
They showed 0 Ray traced games.
No mention of Nvidia this time. But they mentioned Intel cause they are ahead in CPU.
These are just my thoughts.
They showed 0 Ray traced games.
No mention of Nvidia this time. But they mentioned Intel cause they are ahead in CPU.
These are just my thoughts.
Here's how the pricing compares for the M2 and M3 MBP's (models listed at bottom):
- Same starting price.
- Same upcharges for SSDs.
- Same upcharges for RAM, except the first two steps for the M3 are 18/36 instead of 16/32, and the M3 has added options of 48 and 128.
- Upsteps for CPU/GPU aren't comparable but: M3 has lower upcharge to go from base Pro to top Pro (+$200 for M3 vs. +$300 for M2), and higher upcharges to go from top Pro to base Max (+$400 vs. +$200) and base Max to top Max (+$300 vs. +$200). Total upcharge to go from base Pro to top Max in M3 and M2 are +$900 and +$700, respectively.
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Based on the bandwidth numbers @theorist9 posted just above this, they must be populating 3/4 of the M3 Max memory channels on the 14cpu/30gpu chips. This makes sense: if 400 GB/s is adequate to feed the full 40-core GPU (which is the biggest bandwidth monster in the system), then 300 GB/s should be good enough for the 30-core.
128-bit on M3, 192-bit on M3 Pro, and the two chops of Max have 384 and 512-bit interfaces, respectively
Oh, I was thinking of a 3rd tier below the E cores, not between the P and E cores. As you say, the E cores have been growing every year (in size and performance, power consumption is still stellar)… at which point would we call them middle cores?
At least on the GPU front, this update is quite big IMHO. Redshift is more than twice as fast.
Memory configuration is so weird this time around. If you select M3 16 CPU cores + 40 GPU cores the base RAM is 48GB (good), and you can select 64GB or 128GB, but not 96GB, as that configuration is reserved for the 16 CPU + 30 GPU M3 Max 
Getting the fastest CPU now requires getting the fastest GPU too, which is quite unfortunate. Getting the top CPU was like $2000 on the M1 generation vs almost $5000 on M3. And since the M3 Pro is clearly the weakest upgrade of the generation, it‘s not a great upgrade for people looking to spend $2-3k.
Getting the fastest CPU now requires getting the fastest GPU too, which is quite unfortunate. Getting the top CPU was like $2000 on the M1 generation vs almost $5000 on M3. And since the M3 Pro is clearly the weakest upgrade of the generation, it‘s not a great upgrade for people looking to spend $2-3k.
I don't recognise absolutely anything in those die shots, except the GPU clusters and the memory controller
But an A17 analysis claimed that the E-core is still 1/4 of the P-core.
I found this surprising too: https://x.com/iancutress/status/1719176613445742855?s=46&t=AVo4Ae4rwcqD3xOi5WvXyg
Looks like the M3 doesn’t have the A17’s Neural Engine.
Looks like the M3 doesn’t have the A17’s Neural Engine.
So maybe they are mixing and matching designs from across generations … but why?
Jimmyjames
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This, 8gb starting memory and reduced Pro performance leaves a bad taste in my mouth. These are not cheap laptops.
Yoused
up
I don't recognise absolutely anything in those die shots, except the GPU clusters and the memory controller
But an A17 analysis claimed that the E-core is still 1/4 of the P-core.
I go by the cache blocks (big rectangles) and look at the structures around them. When you know how many cores there are, you can pick them out by counting. The E-cores are around the smallest cache block (a square-ish shape, usually), and to me they look larger in the M3-series – probably not half, but more than a quarter.
