M1 -> M2: 2301 -> 2598 = 12.91% increase
M2 -> M3: 2598 -> 3082 = 18.63% increase
M3 -> M4: 3082 -> 3864 = 25.37% increase
Assuming the M4 Geekbench score is legit, it’s interesting to see that the jump from M3 to M4 has the largest percentage increase in single-core performance since the M1 came out. The M1 -> M2 and M2 -> M3 upgrades were solid, but the 25.37% jump from M3 -> M4 is much more significant. It makes you wonder if we’ll keep seeing even bigger performance leaps with future releases, or if there’s something specific about this generation that’s driving such a large gain. Will Apple keep increasing performance at this rate, or is this an exception?
I wonder how much of this increase is solely enabled by TSMC process upgrades, either through higher clock speeds or increased number of transistors per core? It's kind of interesting that every iteration of the M series has corresponded to a change of TSMC process.
M1: 16 billion transistors at 3.2 GHz on TSMC N5
M2: 20 billion transistors at 3.7 GHz on TSMC N5P
M3: 25 billion transistors at 4.05 GHz on TSMC N3B
M4: 28 billion transistors at ?? GHz on TSMC N3E
N3E is slightly less efficient than N3B though, it just has higher yields.
Will they keep this up? Probably. Indefinitely? Likely not. But look at what it’s done. There are compelling ARM hardware outside of Apple now due to the renaissance in performance that this am series chip has shown.
I’ve an M3 max and now I can’t wait to see what an M4 max will do. 256GB ram in the top end laptop? 25-50% more cores?
> There are compelling ARM hardware outside of Apple now
Not only that, this may have finally forced Intel to innovate. Their new Lunar Lake CPUs coming out now are actually competitive with Apple chips for both performance and power. I thought I might not see X86 become competitive again in my lifetime.
That's a good point.. I wonder how much network effect this has on substantiating ARM in server space too. Vendors have been trying that since the early twenty-teens and it was not going anywhere fast until Apple shipped the M1. I don't think it is a direct cause->correlation, but the existence of high powered dev machines running clang and gcc certainly lowers a lot of frictions even in higher level languages like Go.
Anecdotally, a lot of software in the graphics space didn’t have arm availability till after the M series were released. A lot of the windows/linux arm ports of libraries didn’t exist till after despite having hardware available earlier.
Having even one vendor prove that arm is worth paying attention to is the tide that lifts the ships of all other vendors in the arm space .
Numbers are plausible. The M4 iPad is close to an i9-14900k in single thread.
I’ll buy an M4 mini when one comes out to replace my M1.
Plausibly a large part of the perf bump comes from the SVE and SME extensions, for workloads that can put them to use.
Those are nice numbers. But in reality Air M2 had worse performance, because cooling system was much worse.
The box is distinctly for an M3 MacBook Pro from the design. Apple has a different screen on each version and the M3 had the black/grey pipes design features in the video.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/17g3xh0/leaked_m...
Did Apple reuse the graphs on M4? I suspect not.
Is this a review unit that was released early with unofficial packaging?
> 25% faster M4 chip: The box lists this 14-inch MacBook Pro as having an M4 chip with a 10-core CPU, whereas the current model has the M3 chip with an 8-core CPU. An alleged Geekbench 6 benchmark result shared by the YouTube channel behind this leak suggests that the M4 chip will be up to 25% faster than the M3 chip. Apple already introduced the M4 chip in the iPad Pro in May, and it indeed has up to a 10-core CPU and up to 25% faster performance compared to the M3 chip.
> 16GB of RAM: It was previously rumored that 16GB of RAM could become the minimum for all future Macs, and the alleged packaging indeed suggests that the next 14-inch MacBook Pro would start with 16GB of RAM, unless it is somehow a built-to-order configuration that will be offered on Apple's online store.
> Three Thunderbolt 4 ports: The box suggests the base 14-inch MacBook Pro will have three Thunderbolt 4 ports, up from two Thunderbolt 3 ports on the current model.
> Space Black: The box suggests that Space Black would become a color option for the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, whereas it is currently exclusive to models configured with the M3 Pro or M3 Max chip.
Aside, I still have an M1 Pro 16", is it worth upgrading to an M3 (or future M4)? It feels like my M1 can still do everything I need it to (coding, compiling, running emulators for mobile development), but for those that did upgrade, do you feel it was worth it, or are the gains incremental?
> It feels like my M1 can still do everything I need it to
I think you answered your own question: No, you don't need the upgrade.
(I'm in the same boat as you, for what it's worth. My wife and I both have M1 machines, and they both do what we need, so we're not upgrading.)
Still interested to know the answer to this Q tho:
> for those that did upgrade, do you feel it was worth it, or are the gains incremental?
I was comparing notes with a new coworker the other week - I've got an M1 pro, he's got an M3. Running an individual test for a feature we were working on (in Rails) lines up with the 25-30% numbers quoted up thread a bit, but that's the difference between my machine taking 40sec or so vs his taking 30 or less.
It's noticeable when you've got it to compare against, and I'm looking forward to work's hardware refresh cycle bumping me to M4 next year, but I still don't think I'd upgrade if it were a personal machine (and if I can get a decent discount to buy out the depreciated M1 for personal use I'm planning on that rather than looking at anything new).
That's my take as well. I used an M1 and an M3 for the same work, the M3 was definitely faster but the M1 wasn't bad. Both were substantially better than the Intel Macs I was using before (for the same tasks as well). Times cut from 5-10 minutes down to 1-2 minutes on the M1, and another 10-30 seconds shaved off with the M3. So faster, but not as game changing as the M1 itself.
The one thing I do like with the M3 vs M1 is when I had to, for reasons, run an x64 VM. I felt it was barely usable on the M1, but it was tolerable on the M3. The performance on the M3 of an x64 VM was close to the old Intel Macs I'd ditched, which were acceptable but hardly great. The M1 running a VM felt like a time warp back to my college days in the early '00s.
I have a personal 2020 M1 MBP and a work MBP with an M2 or M3 CPU. IMO, the difference isn’t worth an upgrade yet, especially if you compare it to the upgrade from intel to Apple silicon.
I have an M1 mini and and M3 air. I use both of them in very similar ways and don't see a noticeable difference in performance. They're both more than fast enough for everything I do.
It may be faster when switching between multitasking. My problem is mainly that the screen of my m1 mba is too bad. It would be great if I could replace the screen module separately.
That's why my next thing is a framework laptop (I'm aware how tone-deaf it might sound in an Apple thread, but I really think Apple should be leaders on this front instead of making their devices less and less upgradeable and repairable)
They are finally starting to move somewhat in this direction. Maybe we end up closer to that in 3-4 more generations
> I think you answered your own question: No, you don't need the upgrade.
They asked if it would be worth it, not if they needed it.
What version of the M1? I just “upgraded” from an M1 Max to a M3 device. The single core performance is higher on paper, but I don’t really notice it. I do notice the fewer cores. If you are on a base model, it may be worth upgrading to a Pro or Max CPU.
I'd upgrade not for the specs, but just for MagSafe.
It is nice to have magsafe back. Without that I'd be paranoid that the USB sockets would wear out over time from constantly being used for charging.
Don't, in my experience (and that of everyone around me), USB-C is very sturdy. My wife had a MB Pro (last Intel, with USB-C) and recently upgraded to the latest gen with the magnetic connector. It's really annoying that we can't use it on anything but her laptop, it really feels like going backwards and as a result we don't carry it. And for what? So that it gives when you pull it gently? That's also pretty much defining USB-C on all my devices... Apple just really likes their dongles and that's all there is to it, I believe.
> in my experience (and that of everyone around me), USB-C is very sturdy
That might be due to Apple's build quality, but the USB-C connector has been anything but sturdy in most machines I've used. The connection becomes wobbly after just a few months of very careful usage, and tends to cut out if the cable is pulled in a certain direction. Connecting an external disk drive is a plug-and-pray situation. I've even had the connector dislodge entirely on one machine. USB-C may have given us reversibility, but USB-A had a much sturdier connection.
To say nothing of the uncertainty of which protocol is supported and which power profile will be negotiated by the combination of cable and devices. It's a UX mess.
I have one gripe with these awesome machines, the cpu core scheduling. As part of developing our application we run benchmarks. Now every so often we get strange performance dips that I can only attribute to either or both the load generation process or the application process temporarily being scheduled on an efficiency core.
On macOS native there would be profilers I could use to at least detect it. But when using docker that gets all smudged into a single vm process.
Does anyone know how to detect this? Or better prevent? The only way I found is making a development kernel build to switch the boot core to a performance core and then disable all efficiency core. This is not practical on company hardware.
Assuming this is real, I can't help but think this could push Apple to accelerate their reduction on Chinese production. Is there any other realistic way this could have leaked other than through a Chinese backdoor?
Are these being made at Quanta or Foxconn? Since the start of the war, there has been a massive increase in sanction evasion through China and Central Asia. I would have to assume Valentin used a connection that has formed over the past 2 years in order to get a North American SKU as Russia's richest YouTube blogger
In my case going from M2 to M3 with more RAM (from 16 GB to 36 GB) will give me a greater performance increase than going from M2 to M4 both with 16 GB.
Man, the sanctions against Russia really aren't working. They're even getting US technology before it's released to Americans!
I guess Thunderbolt 5 will have to wait until M5.
I do wonder if they can continue improving interconnect specs as with Thunderbolt 4 the cable seems to be already the limiting factor. It’s thick, expensive and only available in very short lengths.
Reminds me a bit of those blurry photos of fake iProducts ca. 2005, taken in a blue elevator or loading dock. Anyone remember those?
Still using an Intel MacBook Pro. Time for an M3 or wait for M4?
If the M4 really is coming out in a month, wait. Either get a 25% improvement “for free” (compared to what you’d pay now), or get a used one for cheaper as people with more money than sense rush to upgrade.
But it is way past time to upgrade your Intel Mac to Apple Silicon. The difference is night and day.
At this point wait for the M4, seems like it's going to drop in a month or so, and then get that. Though truth be told you could jump to an M4 MacBook Air and still get better performance than your Intel machine. Most people do not need the "Pro" or "Max" chips, even professionals.
M3 is already a massive improvement, but since prices don’t really get lower as time goes on, you might as well buy the M4 when it is fresh?
You should wait for M5 to get M4 for a discount
I was hoping Apple would get into TB5 for the M4 Macs.
“Space black” is considered an upgrade nowadays?
I just want to know max RAM configuration in the laptop form factor, and the memory bandwidth. I would like more than 800Gb/s memory bandwidth
My M1 Max can do everything I want it to, although it maxes out at 64gb RAM. but my use cases expand above 128gb and would change my approach
specifically would allow my machine to act as nodes on more distributed networks, maybe even Solana, and run larger language models - at all and faster
I want to know its bandwidth. How does it compare to Nvidia 4090? If it exceeds that (at least in the Max/Ultra model), it'll be huge; we'll suddenly have solid +190GB of VRAM (technically URAM) to run multiple LLMs on.
That comparison doesn't make sense. If you want 192GB VRAM, then that is the size of 8 4090s, so to make it competitive, the bandwidth also needs to be 8 times higher. Or 8TB/s in this case.
This is so wrong I don't even need to correct it.