I currently have a base model 14" M1 MBP which I use when traveling mainly to play WoW. It handles it fairly well but I would like some more GPU grunt. My first thought was the base model 14" M3 Max but it seems the fans on that one are extremely noisy similar to a gaming laptop. So I was thinking of stepping down to the 18 GPU core M3 Pro model. Any thoughts on how much of an upgrade that would be in my use case?
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I honestly wouldn’t recommend that. it’d perform better but not by a huge margin. The pro on the m3 series was adjusted to be weaker in comparison to max
M1 and m2 pro sat kinda in middle. but onm it sits more to left of middle of in between base and max.
It’s also a pretty expensive upgrade for minor gains. now if you went from that pro to a max that’s a diff story.
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I see. Thank you very much for the feedback! Are you running the 30 or 40 core M3 Max? How bad is the fan noise if you don’t lock to 60fps? (I prefer 120)
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depends on what settings at 120 I suppose, some areas won’t get to 120 cause they’re cpu bound like valdraken, so fans will kick up there.
but most quieter areas will be fine. fan noise doesn’t bother me though. I mean you hear em but it’s not like a wind turbine.
I have 40C
like I say in other threads, you’ll want to keep liquid at fair and compute off to get most frames. both are just too draining as neither are optimized correctly for apple silicon
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I have the base M3 max 14/30 and the fans no longer come on at all I low power mode, and very rarely did before. (Sometimes in Valdrakken during busy times.)
The thing runs it like a champ and generally stays in the low to mid 60s sometimes peaking in the 70s so far now that I have enabled LPM. (Which doesn’t seem to have any notable variance in performance.)
Now I do optimize settings here based on recommendations in this forum as well so you might want to research some of the other threads here for more guidance.
Can test it out for you without locking the FPS if you so desire.
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Lowpower mode probably wouldn’t work well for 120fps mode, or ultra settings (minus the two offenders) but it’d probably run well with 60fps on medium settings.
both viable strategies. low power mode might dip in raids though cause you need all cpu you have there.
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Basing my thoughts form here:
And not just click tech but also the feedback from folks in the comments. I suspect it’s a very minor impact to wow overall.
I’m getting excited about the potential of Studio M3 Max.
“And then he saw the price tag…”
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If it’s inline with the current M2 Max, I’ll be fine. It’s not much more than building a comparable PC.
I would be interested the performance difference of the M3 Max in FPS with the M2 Max I have, most likely not a lot as the M3 GPU is more refined, to use it to it’s full potential they need to adjust the engine which they won’t do. M2 over M1 Max was brute force which for WoW is good… I am even thinking just buying a Windows PC again as dev won’t optimise anything for Mac now or in the near future…
I also got the feeling 10.2 made performance worse, I still manage fine but meh, happy I moved to QHD from 4K but still places with liquid or raiding or Valdrakken makes you FPS go boom, though that is also the case on high Windows machines but still.
And for me FSR 1.0 is not an option, I really can’t understand how ppl use it in a 50%, I did use it (when on 4k in like 83% and sharpening on 0.6) which was okish, but noticeable.
I run great on my M3 max, and the only issue I “ever” have is although the temperatures seem fine, still under 60, all of a sudden the fans will come on and my FPS will spike down to 30 for a bit. It doesn’t happen all the time, just every once in a while but I would like to figure it out if it’s a setting.
It seems that it’s something that is “going wrong” versus a performance issue or something that might just be natural so will try to isolate it.
Outside of that I love that I can pretty much play the game noise free and so smooth on a small laptop that I can also use for work.
I suppose we paid for it, but I really have had bad luck with windows laptops and would rather just use a desktop as I pretty much “thermaled” my last windows laptop and melted the GPU or something haha.
Might even take it in to get cleaned every few months.
I’d say biggest gain over M2 would actually be more brute force on the cpu side, since wow is almost always held back by cpu not gpu. frame drops in raids, world bosses, and valkdraken is almost always the cpu and never the gpu, so those areas always benefit from the latest and greatest cpu regardless. but not by a huge margin. the usual gen over gen gains of 15% or whatever.
I’ve not noticed any of the performance drops and stuff but I also run custom fan curve. i question the 60C if performance drops happen and fans kick on cause the default can curve barely kicks fans on at all at 70C and if they really kick on it’s not til like 90C, which is why i use a custom fan curve. I do know even app I use has bad temp sensor data for gpu but i switched it to cpu temp cause since they’re all in same package it’s all relative and that’s when i saw true temps were climbing way up there til I adjusted fan curve.
Yeah brute force is pure cpu, I don’t that is an issue with an M2 Max as I never see the cpu on 100%. I think be patient and wait for the brute force M4 GPU 
I am also using a Studio so no problem with temps. Anyways just hoping they might implement Tile rendering or FSR 2.2 for the next expansion.
I wouldn’t hold breath about FSR 2.2 since last i heard supporting temporal rendering needs at least 6 months of dev time and such dev work hasn’t even been approved or started yet. so no DLSS or FSR 2.x
and yeah M4 is probably a better wait for m2 users. I’m of same mindset that you want every other generation, same as phone. even then that’s hard to stomach cost wise. i could only justify cost of M1 to M3 because i use machine heavily (12+ hours a day) for work and it’s thoroughly a business expense. I’ll probably swap it again at M5 and M7 etc.
Yeah six months sounds really like a lot and for sure they will not earn more money because of it. New expansions same engine same stuff I guess.
Yeah I use my Mac all day so fine to upgrade, love working on it and being able to play WoW is awesome. I was thinking again about a separate Windows machine but nah let’s not go there
And buying an Ultra is a bit too much, wish they had an option for more GPU cores on a Max but ofc the way they make those integrated CPU/GPU’s that won’t happen.
Let’s hope Blizzards makes some time free for the Dev to optimise the game more for the memory/register tech soo stuff you posted in another topic.