If that goes up 50%, it will be 72k. 80% would be 86k. M3 Ultra would then be roughly the same as the Threadripper Pro 5975WX. The tops ones cost over $5k and the performance of the others is within 30%. The M3 Max rivals the top current Intel/AMD laptop CPUs ( https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html ).
From Apple's GPU test, it looks like M3 Max GPU improves raw performance by 20%. Number of cores only went up about 5%. For non-raytraced performance, M2 Max is around a 3070 laptop. 20% boost will bring M3 Max GPU to a 4070/3080 laptop.
The big gain with the GPU is hardware raytracing. For 3D rendering, that should make it competitive with Nvidia/AMD.
M3 Ultra GPU probably won't scale 100% but it should reach at least 80% higher than M3 Max so between a laptop and desktop 4080. Nvidia 4090 will be around 50% higher.
M4 Ultra might be able to match a 4090 but when it launches, Nvidia will be onto the 5090, which will be 70% faster but this GPU can use 400W so it will always be able to run faster. Being within 60-70% of the best performance of AMD/Intel/Nvidia is competitive, most tasks would show a negligible difference and the Macs run silently, at full speed on battery in light, portable form factors and with huge amounts of graphics memory (Nvidia 4090 has 24GB, Ultra will probably have up to 256GB).
This was what I was expecting when I saw the A17PRO... Apple needed feature parity with a Intel/Amd w atleast a Nvidia 4080 performance and Ray Tracing + denoise and upscaling. AND they are delivering!
I am in the market for a M3 Ultra workstation come 2024 for sure. Ideally with 128GB or more ram. I will run realtime animation in blender and unreal engine. Now... What if I buy a Vision Pro instead of displays?
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
I'm toying with the idea of converting my 2015 iMac into a stand-alone monitor and putting the motherboard in a stand-alone enclosure so I can keep my VM hosting going. But the i7 only has 4 cores so my 64GB RAM is not the limiting factor. My son needs a project for one of his courses at school...
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Can you run x86 Linux on m series Mac’s?!? Is there a virtual x86 emulator already?
I have the last intel MacBook Pro from late 2019. Spent almost $4000 on it. Unfortunately can’t justify upgrading for thousands more when mine works great still.
I’m glad you posted, because I’m kind of in the same boat. I have few complaints about the Intel i9, but it does take its time on some audio processing and video transcoding I do. Other than that, it’s suitably speedy for my mostly-modest needs.
Thankfully, I didn’t spend $4K on my 2019 last-of-the-15-inch MBPs, more like $2.5K, and that’s still MORE than it would cost me to get a 14-inch MBP with M3 Pro (again, more than I need right now), which runs about $2K (before tax) with the specs I want, and I prefer the smaller size anyway.
I’m still agog that the price of the base 14-inch MBP with M3 now costs $400 **less** than the same model did last year. THIS NEVER HAPPENS! I can’t believe the Mac sites didn’t make a bigger deal about this.
Sort of like both you, like to get a long life out of the electronics.. I did upgrade to the M1 Macbook Pro with a docking station last year, but that was replacing both a 2012 iMac and 2015 Macbook. Was a great upgrade!
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Can you run x86 Linux on m series Mac’s?!? Is there a virtual x86 emulator already?
I don't know of an emulator for x86 OSes, but it's definitely not impossible and would probably seem pretty compared to the average PC out there, but I was talking about running Linux ARM64 in a VM.
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Can you run x86 Linux on m series Mac’s?!? Is there a virtual x86 emulator already?
I don't know of an emulator for x86 OSes, but it's definitely not impossible and would probably seem pretty compared to the average PC out there, but I was talking about running Linux ARM64 in a VM.
That's what I thought, running ARM version of Ubuntu, as it has done for a while just like Windows for ARM.
I wonder if x86 emulator has come out yet for OS's that aren't compiled for ARM.
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Can you run x86 Linux on m series Mac’s?!? Is there a virtual x86 emulator already?
I don't know of an emulator for x86 OSes, but it's definitely not impossible and would probably seem pretty compared to the average PC out there, but I was talking about running Linux ARM64 in a VM.
That's what I thought, running ARM version of Ubuntu, as it has done for a while just like Windows for ARM.
I wonder if x86 emulator has come out yet for OS's that aren't compiled for ARM.
Is anyone even working on that? Not sure what the appeal is.
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Can you run x86 Linux on m series Mac’s?!? Is there a virtual x86 emulator already?
I don't know of an emulator for x86 OSes, but it's definitely not impossible and would probably seem pretty compared to the average PC out there, but I was talking about running Linux ARM64 in a VM.
That's what I thought, running ARM version of Ubuntu, as it has done for a while just like Windows for ARM.
I wonder if x86 emulator has come out yet for OS's that aren't compiled for ARM.
There's an x86 emulator:
but the native ARM version will run 5-10x faster than the emulated x86 one.
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Can you run x86 Linux on m series Mac’s?!? Is there a virtual x86 emulator already?
I don't know of an emulator for x86 OSes, but it's definitely not impossible and would probably seem pretty compared to the average PC out there, but I was talking about running Linux ARM64 in a VM.
That's what I thought, running ARM version of Ubuntu, as it has done for a while just like Windows for ARM.
I wonder if x86 emulator has come out yet for OS's that aren't compiled for ARM.
There's an x86 emulator:
but the native ARM version will run 5-10x faster than the emulated x86 one.
If you had to run an emulator in an M3 Max MBP, I wonder how much slower it would be than using one of the last gen Intel MBP with a VM.
The final round of Intel Macs are still relevant for users who need to run multiple virtual machines targeting Intel deployments on Windows and Linux and who want to do it from a Mac host. If I were still doing that kind of development I would hang on to that type of Mac until the wheels fell off. But that window is closing fast and the only way forward is to use a beefy Intel Windows box.
Otherwise, Apple Silicon is unbeatable.
Why not run Windows and Linux in a VM in an M-series Mac? I do and it's a screamer.
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Can you run x86 Linux on m series Mac’s?!? Is there a virtual x86 emulator already?
I don't know of an emulator for x86 OSes, but it's definitely not impossible and would probably seem pretty compared to the average PC out there, but I was talking about running Linux ARM64 in a VM.
That's what I thought, running ARM version of Ubuntu, as it has done for a while just like Windows for ARM.
I wonder if x86 emulator has come out yet for OS's that aren't compiled for ARM.
There's an x86 emulator:
but the native ARM version will run 5-10x faster than the emulated x86 one.
If you had to run an emulator in an M3 Max MBP, I wonder how much slower it would be than using one of the last gen Intel MBP with a VM.
Much slower it turns out. Emulated is barely usable, left is x86 Linux, right is arm native. Native is nearly 30x faster:
On M3 Max, it wouldn't even be as fast as a VM on a Mac from over 10 years ago. There may be ways to tune an x86 version to run better but it would be best to keep an old x86 machine around for x86 VMs.
For most use cases, a native ARM VM is the way to go and potentially emulating x86 apps separately like how Windows ARM and Rosetta work.
Native VMs are about 70-90% of the native system performance.
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I mean the Pro is fine for what I currently want it for, but the Max...I mean...
This was what I was expecting when I saw the A17PRO... Apple needed feature parity with a Intel/Amd w atleast a Nvidia 4080 performance and Ray Tracing + denoise and upscaling. AND they are delivering!
I am in the market for a M3 Ultra workstation come 2024 for sure. Ideally with 128GB or more ram. I will run realtime animation in blender and unreal engine. Now... What if I buy a Vision Pro instead of displays?
If anything, it's the option of being able boot directly into Windows with BootCamp that I miss about the Intel Macs.
Sort of like both you, like to get a long life out of the electronics.. I did upgrade to the M1 Macbook Pro with a docking station last year, but that was replacing both a 2012 iMac and 2015 Macbook. Was a great upgrade!
I wonder if x86 emulator has come out yet for OS's that aren't compiled for ARM.
but the native ARM version will run 5-10x faster than the emulated x86 one.
On M3 Max, it wouldn't even be as fast as a VM on a Mac from over 10 years ago. There may be ways to tune an x86 version to run better but it would be best to keep an old x86 machine around for x86 VMs.
For most use cases, a native ARM VM is the way to go and potentially emulating x86 apps separately like how Windows ARM and Rosetta work.
Native VMs are about 70-90% of the native system performance.