The Apple silicon M3
Helping you decide which M3 CPU to buy
Apple released their M3 chip for their MacBook Pro causing quite a stir in the Apple community. Can it really be faster? Who needs something better than M1 or M2? Which M3 CPU to buy? Let me show why every CPU option is great in itself.
Apple spread a massive amount of for-review laptops all carrying the fastest M3 Max. This is a form of manipulation because we don’t all want to spend the maximum amount of money. There’s a massive price difference (almost 2x!) between the base MacBook Pro model and the most expensive CPU option, even when not trying to max out the specs so we need a good comparison.
The best buy is the cheapest MacBook Pro you can get that suits your most immediate needs. For instance, want to keep your dual monitor set up? Get the M3 Max, since the M3 and M3 Pro only support a single external display (boo!)
I’ve analyzed the 5 distinct CPU/GPU options for choosing a CPU. To make prices comparable they are all with 1TB disk and memory set 16Gb or higher if required.
Memory woes
A brief side note about the memory options: you can’t select any memory size with every CPU, options are limited and fragmented. For example, if you want more than 36Gb on your 14-core M3 Max you need to spend 930 euros to leap to a whopping 96Gb!
Performance per euro/dollar/rupee
If you’re not a tech reviewer/Apple enthusiast you are probably hesitant to spend money on things you don’t need and rightly so. More often that not, opportunity cost is left out of the argumentation. Don’t just think about how much more ram/storage 900 euros would give you, also think about other things could you spend those 900 euros on (a big screen TV, a holiday, etc.)
The ladder strategy is something Apple has perfected. There is always a way to spend more money and it will feel like money well spent. Marques Brownlee explains it well:
The ladder strategy is a trap that you need to push back against with as much rational thinking as you can muster. So to keep it rational, let’s have a look at the numbers:
More Cores is better?
As you can see the price of the M3 Max with 16 cores is nearly double that of the entry level M3. The single core performance is the nearly the same for all models, which means most tasks are equally fast on both machines.
Some people think having more cores will improve their lives in a big way and all the benchmarks out there do paint that picture. But it actually depends on your set up. To use the extra CPU power three things need to be true at the same time:
- Software that can utilizes all those cores
- A workload that utilizes all those cores significantly
- You are in a time squeeze
If you don’t do video production or other intense tasks like compiling large code bases, you will not need more cores and money is better spent on other things, perhaps more RAM or disk space or even just leave the money in your pocket (US readers be shocked now)
What Apple has done is tie other upgrades to the faster CPU models, so if you want more external displays or more RAM, you’ll be buying the higher end models, even if you don’t need the extra CPU power.
Upgrades
Let’s look at each line in the table:
M3. The best deal is, of course, the base model. You’ll get all the MacBook Pro goodness for the lowest price: from the elite screen to the smooth MacOS software and everything else that makes Apple computers great. And single core performance is M3 level, not M3-lite. The hundreds or thousands of Euros not spent could be used to upgrade sooner to some next version of MacBook pro which again will be a bigger impact than a few extra CPU cores now.
M3 Pro. The 5-p-core M3 Pro is by far the biggest leap in performance, for a 12% price increase you get a 38% speed increase and a 12.5% memory increase. If you can put those CPU cores to good use, this looks like an upgrade well spent
M3 Pro. The 6-p-core M3 Pro is not recommended, for 10% more money you only get 5% more performance and no extra memory.
M3 Max. Upgrading to the ‘entry level’ 10-p-core Max also gives you a big leap in multi core performance, also the GPU is quite a bit faster and the memory has higher bandwidth and doubles in size. This is probably the hardest upgrade to ponder because the price increase is massive (for that money you can buy a whole extra laptop or 2 monitors) but the speed increase is also significant.
M3 Max. The 12-p-core Max is a meager upgrade, for 14% more money you get 10% more performance. I’m pretty sure 10% more performance is unnoticeable for most people. The memory increases again to 48 Gigabyte, which in the Apple universe is massive and only needed if you have GIGANTIC files and many heavy applications open according to Apple. Be ware of the ‘bigger is better’ mantra because money spent on things you don’t use is not better.
Side note: Apple lies to you on their website: the toggle for the faster M3 Max says +345 but when you select it, the price increases by 575 because of the memory bump. D’oh!
Conclusion
You get to spend your money you seem best. Skip two CPU models in the M3 line-up: The 12–core M3 Pro and the 16-core M3 Max — these give you the least bang for the buck and probably only theoretical performance you won’t notice in real life.
M3: Recommended: all the M3 and MacBook Pro goodness for an entry level price.
M3 Pro 11-cores: Recommended: a huge 40% increase in CPU cores plus a modest increase in memory (and bandwidth) for just 10% more money.
M3 Max 14-cores: Recommended: despite the eye watering price increase from the Pro, it does offer a big speed increase and more memory and an extra external display.
Summing it all up: The 11-core M3 Pro with 18 or 36GB of RAM is the absolute sweet spot in terms of price and performance. Unless you really need to hook up more than one external display, this is the one to get.
