How SCARY FAST are M3 Macs? The Hidden Meaning in Apple's Performance Numbers

Apple's spooky October 30th announcement revealed the first M3 generation Macs, including the MacBook Pro and iMac. But how fast can we expect them to be? Here's an analysis of what you should and should not believe from their performance charts.
Apple also made a big deal about Dynamic Caching, Mesh shading, and hardware-accelerated raytracing for gaming, but how does that actually translate to performance?
Let's take a closer look as we review each of the 3 chips' configurations.

[@dovmerrill804]

You didn’t mention it, but the low-end M3 Max config has lower 300MB/sec memory bandwidth compared to high-end config 400MB/sec. Like the M3 Pro, this is probably due to having 3 memory chips rather than 4 memory chips (and subsequent one less data path) on the SOC (System on Chip).

[@MutePCdotcom]

Good catch! And thanks for the additional insight!

[@KaitavSapreMusic]

Great video! I had a feeling that M3 Pro would not have a significant performance improvement over M2 Pro, so glad I did not wait and bought and started using the Mac mini M2 Pro about 5 months ago. And Mac mini M3 Pro may not come out until Q1 of 2024 I guess.

[@MutePCdotcom]

Thanks for watching! M2 Pro is a great machine. And you are probably right about M3 Pro Mac mini, or possibly even later. I could even see Apple skipping the M3 generation completely for Mac mini.

[@danieldosen5260]

How about comparing a base of anything with one with 24GB of ram?

[@crossinghorizons]

In the end this is speculation, need to wait for benchmark tests. Do appreciate the efforts of addressing this though!

[@dovmerrill804]

Not really speculation when it is based off the Apple presentation slides/images.

[@MutePCdotcom]

Thanks! Real benchmarks and usage will be able to reveal the finer details of the performance differences for sure.

[@RogerJoseph]

There are such bad take-aways in this video, yes it's 3 months old but saying things like one has 8 efficiency cores vs 6 is "BAD" is plain wrong. It's not saying hey "They" were able to deliver better performance at less power usage (3nm) with needing less cores (higher yield). These are engineers with super smart ideas on how the technology works. More is NOT better that's like someone who knows nothing about technology trying to put "common sense" to something they have a passing understanding of.

[@felicytatomaszewska]

This is the first authentic and honest analysis of M3. Most of the reviewers are either paid shillers or fan boys

[@MutePCdotcom]

Thanks for watching!

[@Tvj_films8452]

Ain’t nothing worth upgrading til m6 or m7

[@MutePCdotcom]

"If what you have works well, keep using it" is a smart piece of advice to save money!

[@MadelnMachines]

Yeah very disappointing unless you want to spend 4k on a laptop

[@MutePCdotcom]

The Max chips are indeed really expensive.

[@MrMoviePhoneEx]

seriously getting tired of these videos, my fault for clicking and no issue to you or your presentation, but this info is just more mindless speculation until they actually launch. the numbers are the numbers, but the performance is what matters and if we'll actually notice the difference. the m series processors are a line of diminishing returns and the most we can look forward to at this point is increased effeciency while maintaining or besting the previous gen's performance.

[@charlievarley]

Geekbench numbers are out there already for cpu. I know its only a benchmark, but when comparing, it looks like the multicore m3 is just a little better than m2 pro. The m3 pro is similar to the m2 max and the m3 max just a little bit under the m2 ultra. In single core there is around 25% uplift. I'm looking forward to seeing what the new GPU can do.