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Yet another way of phrasing:

The six performance cores in the M3 Pro are on par with the eight performance cores in the M2 Max.

That’s a per-core performance increase of 1/(6/8)=+33% (ignoring the efficiency cores because I have no idea how they contribute to performance).

People are picking on that lede tweet somewhat unfairly. Numbers in the rest of the article say that the same benchmark run between the two "pro" variants improves only 6%. And that's actually quite disappointing for a chip that's supposed to be a on a new semiconductor node. Not a lot of people make a laptop purchase decision over 6%.

> Look at the annual incremental performance increases seen from AMD and Intel and I think these gains compare pretty favorably. I read some 14th-gen Intel benchmarks and they were pretty indistinguishable from 13-gen benchmarks.

Exactly, because Raptor Lake and Alder Lake were fabbed on the same process (10nm++/Intel7, the name changed over the period for marketing reasons). That wasn't supposed to happen here, it was supposed to be new stuff.

> (10nm++/Intel7, the name changed over the period for marketing reasons)

People like to pick on this change a lot but these names have been marketing for decades, and other fabs (including TSMC and GloFo) named nodes more advanced than they were purely to look better (iirc - GF 14nm was much closer to Intel's 22nm than to 14nm, Samsung 8nm performed way worse than TSMC N7 etc.) - meanwhile "Intel 10ESF" aka "Intel 7" is actually very similar in most metrics to TSMC N7, though is more amenable to higher clocks.

If anyone wants to loose braincells over this, Wikipedia editors are (still) having an epicly long debate over this since the name was changed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:7_nm_process#Intel_7

> People are picking on that lede tweet somewhat unfairly. Numbers in the rest of the article say that the same benchmark run between the two "pro" variants improves only 6%. And that's actually quite disappointing for a chip that's supposed to be a on a new semiconductor node. Not a lot of people make a laptop purchase decision over 6%.

The M3 Pro has been neutered - the normal M2 Pro* was 8 Performance + 4 Efficiency cores (same as the Max) whereas the M3 Pro is just 6 P + 6 E cores.

If you want the full complement of CPU cores on the M3, you have to get the Max variant.

*There was a special 'low' end M2 pro that only had 6 + 4 cores.

    The M3 Pro has been neutered

Neutered? What a strange way to describe a chip that is about faster than its predecessor in most benchmarks. You're strangely focusing on an implementation detail rather than actual performance.

https://www.theverge.com/23944344/apple-macbook-pro-14-2023-...

If a car company replaced a 4.0 liter internal combustion engine with a 3.8 liter engine that outperformed its predecessor, would you say that they "neutered it" because hey, you're getting 0.2 less liters of displacement?

For me to call something "crippled" or "neutered" or some such it would have to have actual functionality removed, or a meaningful reduction in actual performance. This is the opposite of that.

If you want to call the M3 Pro an underwhelming upgrade relative to the M2 Pro, that's your right and I don't really disagree with you, but I also think it compares pretty favorably to the annual incremental upgrades from Intel and others.

Sure it might be faster but in context it doesn’t feel like a significant improvement. The base M3 and the M3 Max have fairly large gains over their predecessors, but the M3 Pro doesn’t have nearly as large of a gain (this is all mentioned in the article). It stands out and it’s pretty clear that Apple wants people to “upgrade” to the Max which comes with a +$800 margin.

I’m holding judgement until I see real world performance benchmarks vs synthetic but I fully understand everyone’s reservations with the M3 Pro.

    Sure it might be faster but in context it doesn’t feel
    like a significant improvement.

So they can't just make things faster in an objective way. They have to make you "feel" a certain thing.

    It stands out and it’s pretty clear that Apple wants 
    people to “upgrade” to the Max which comes with a +$800 margin.

Few thoughts there.

1. Well, they certainly won't mind if you buy the Max. No argument there.

2. As for Apple's intentions I think they were extremely honest during the initial presentation itself. The market for these machines are primarily M1 and Intel Mac users. Very few people upgrade their laptops every single year.

3. The M2 lineup was a bit weird, right? If I am remembering correctly there was not a clear case for the M2 Max versus the M2 Pro. I think the M3 lineup is a bit of a correction there. While I certainly wish every chip got like, a million times faster... the product tiers here seem less confusing.

> It stands out and it’s pretty clear that Apple wants people to “upgrade” to the Max which comes with a +$800 margin.

Eh? Someone who was previous going to buy an M2 Pro would very likely buy an M3 Pro, not an M3 Max.

This is likely Apple managing yield. If they'd stuck with the same core count, the M3 Pro would be faster, sure, but it would probably also be more expensive.

The M3 Pro has been restricted to prevent it from competing with the Max on CPU performance. Whereas the M2 Pro and M2 Max were essential identical on CPU performance (with the exception of the 10-core M2 Pro which was only standard on the low-end 14" model).

To me that feels like neutering.

Doesn't mean it's a bad chip/machine but clearly the product marketing people made the call here.

To neuter an animal is to remove their testicles, eliminating their ability and drive to reproduce and generally making them less aggressive.

That's not what they did to the M3 Pro. What they did was, they improved it a bit relative to the M2 Pro. But not as much as they improved the models that bracket it.

I realize I'm complaining about needlessly hyperbolic tech-related smack talk on the frigging internet, which is sort of like complaining about moistness in the ocean. But still, lol @ describing a modest upgrade as "neutering."

You know what was neutered? The Apple IIgs. Those 65c816 CPUs could go up to like 16mhz, easy peasy. But they stuck a 3.57mhz 65c816 in there and never upgraded it so that the IIgs wouldn't encroach on the Mac. Now that was a real hatchet job.

Yet apologists proclaim it's a good thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38125771

> Not a lot of people make a laptop purchase decision over 6%.

How many people make laptop purchase decisions over performance any more? I’d think the GPU boost and things like AV1 are going to matter more, which is probably why Apple focused on them.

Exactly. A mid level part being basically equivalent to a top tier part from last generation is a huge win imo.

Yup. And good bump in single core performance, which you'll notice for most use cases. So really mid level part beats top tier part from last generation.

The difference between the M2 Pro and M2 Max was quite subtle, especially on the CPU department. Same exact CPU cores except the Pro had a binned variant with two P cores disabled. The biggest difference between the two was on the GPU front. If they're testing the CPU, then the M2 Pro and M2 Max should have similar performance (assuming non-binned M2 Pro).