Any early thoughts on how/if the M3 chip will affect WoW? I desperately need to upgrade my old intel chip iMac and have been waiting for the new chip.
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The m3 base and pro chips actually have some concessions from M2 that may cause raw performance to be down a little. lower performance core count, lower memory bandwidth. likely to make room for the RT cores (wow won’t use) and hardware mesh shading (wow also won’t use). I think anyone on m2 should NOT upgrade to m3 unless they are going to a max, cause they may actually see some slight performance LOSS.
the M3 max will be biggest gains cause it doesn’t make cpu core concessions or memory bandwidth loss and should be really powerful. that said anyone who’s on M1 thinking about M3, all M3 should be upgrades and anyone on intel should definitely consider M3.
but i stand by that if you are going M3, if you can manage it, go Max to get the most performance cpu cores and most gpu cores. the mesh shader hardware support will help other games but not wow. RT cores will help no games right now since there is literally not a single mac game that has raytracing that I’m aware of (yet).
Also if you’re like me and play unported games like diablo 4 and diablo 2 using apps like crossover. it’s worth noting that D3DMetal uses a lot of Mesh shaders so M3 might actually help quite a bit here. will need testing.
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This is going to be especially true of the iMacs, which have only the base M3 and a supremely pathetic maximum of 24 GB unified RAM. Since the IGP built into the M3 uses part of that RAM and the game uses part of that RAM, when you add in the OS, you’ve got a lot less headroom than you think. It’s amazing just how utterly craptastic Apple treated the iMacs this time around. Those had the opportunity for some better cooling, but I guess Mac Studio sales are so abysmal that Apple doesn’t want any other machine to cannibalize sales on that front. This event went from “scary fast” to “scraptacular farce” pretty darn fast. Pun intended.
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Yeah the imac not having an M3 pro at a minimum made it a hard fail to start with. 8GB base too. anyone buying it expecting performance are gonna find that at that resolution, will chug just browsing facebook.
But the M3 Max I ordered cause my M1 max by comparison too far behind already. plus those hardware mesh shaders will help a lot with crossover (windows in wine) gaming. and going from 8 perf cores to 12, 2 efficency to 4 will be big too. Def more juice to multi task. and 32 gpu cores to 40 will help me too, especially since they’re also more efficient
it does hurt a little to trade in an M1 max for only 1350 when it cost over 4k 2 years ago, but it’s a machine i use 10+ hours a day every day for both work, AND gaming. the M3 will be as well and i’ll definitely push it to limit too. I have a feeling, just as apple wants, these macs will be throw away machines every 2-3 years, at rate they are advancing apple silicon, really 2 years for professionals who use em.
Also, changing character before I forget, i can’t keep posting on my classic era character forever. I never switched to that on purpose 
OH I see, when i server transferred Omegal, it lost mvp, and it auto moved to Who, and forums auto switched to Who as well. I’ll see if they can fix that.
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Like you want more than 24GB for a M3, seriously? Besides that they introduced that dynamic caching with the GPU so 16GB should be WAY enough for the M3 GPU. Only thing a bit lame it not making 12GB base.
Apple Studio with M3 stuff will surely come in Jan/Feb, it’s Apple they don’t want to introduce all the stuff in once.
Ppl want thin sexy devices (i like it, would not buy it as 24 is too small anayways), not a big coolermaster LED stuff from Apple. iMac at least the 24inch is not made for that, not sure why you make such a big fuss about it.
Also M3 should be faster than the M2, M3 Pro yes different core count but E-Cores are must faster, the lower bandwidth should not matter that much (take note AMD Zen has lower per core).
Also if WoW starting using mesh shaders that would be a big boost for M3 only (and PC), but I guess that will never happen.
Anyways ppl are making way to much presumption while no benchmark is out yet, it’s all clickbait with less memory bandwith and less P-cores most spam tech sites are loving this. Just wait for next week to make a decision.
I have a M2 Max, use it for work and bit of gaming but probably now wait till the M4, unless benchmark show more gains than Apple presented.
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Yeah, agree on the iMacs. My intended replacement is a 16” MacBook Pro with an additional monitor. Still working out which chip, exact amount of memory, etc. but I’ve been saving for a couple of years now and might be able to swing a very sweet system. I’ll probably try to get another year or so out of my LG Ultra Fine monitor as the extra one before upgrading that.
Think I will be able to swing the M3 Max on a MacBook Pro. Your responses have been really helpful, thank you!
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LOL, well, remember I am going from an old Intel Mac, so pretty sure it will be a huge change even if it is not noticeably faster than the M1 or M2.
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I promise you, if you only have 16GB of memory, you are using a lot of compessed/VM. even before you open a game. right now I have 4 browser tabs open, discord and a few social media apps. OS, all the apps, and the 4 browser tabs are using 24GB of ram.
Now lets say i fire up world of warcraft. App will use 3-4GB of ram, but also 4-8GB more as VRAM. In fact it’s the vram most forget about with unified memory. They try to compare a macbook with 16GB of ram to a PC with 16GB of ram that ALSO has 8GB of VRAM. and for modern gaming you should have at LEAST 4VRAM but 8 preferred. which is why I literally take that 16GB base, and add 8 to it right off bat. that’s where 24 comes from. 24GB IS the new 16 when you consider unified memory when it comes to any kind of gaming.
As for performance and benchmarks. M3 is superior in a few ways but i’ve literally already talked with developers directly especially for apps like WoW that will not ever use those mesh shaders. M2 to 3 is effectively a sidegrade when comparing the base and the pro. especially the pro cause it REDUCED performance core count by swappnig 2 of them to Effiicency cores. so more performant or not, they swapped 2 cores. they also reduced memory bandwidth. the max is only one that didn’t take huge concession hits. I suspect to add RT and mesh to the smaller base and pro dies they had to take a hit somewhere.
We’ll likely see benchmarks though where some things are better and some things are worse. but the biggest point I was making was VALUE. it’s not worth thousands of dollars for M2 to upgrade to M3 for what might be 0-10% gains and in some cased minor losses. M3 and M3 pro are for people stilll on M1, or older. M3 max, is a bit more of a leap for M2 users but only if they have money to burn. even apple didn’t compare M3 to M2, cause they knew better. these machines are upgrades for M1 and older.
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I returned my m2 pro since it was in return window to see about m3. Was the middle tier 19 core gpu.
It ran for me amazingly would going to the max be that huge ?
Also another option. Is deals on refurb M2 Max as well
I might even just get an m2 but 32 gb instead of 16 refurb prob same price around As the 18 core m3.
Oh well wait to see some testing results
The problem is the resolution of the display. Even with more efficiency, losing that much RAM off the top is enough to kill any performance gains in a gaming scenario. And as we’ve seen with the way Agent has been the last two years, no, 16 GB isn’t enough on a system that uses part of its RAM for the IGP.
Memory bandwidth plays a huge part in performance, especially for a system like Apple’s M-series with a unified RAM setup. One needs only see the knock-on effect cutting the RAM bus width has on performance by looking at nVidia’s 4060/Ti and 4070 models, or hell, their 4080 12 GB nee 4070 “Ti”. Cutting the memory bandwidth utterly wrecked performance on the 4060 series to the point the AMD counterparts look stellar by comparison. I don’t expect that an M3’s IGP, even as efficient as it may be, is going to approach even a 3080 in performance in actual apples to apples workload comparisons. There’s only so much Apple can wring out of even their newest SoCs. I’m certainly not going to expect performance akin to the 4090 I have in my system. FWIW, memory bandwidth is what props the M-series up as much as it has been so far. It sure as hell isn’t the IGP itself propping the machines up as thus far, as impressive as those IGPs have been, they aren’t replacements for a good, or even decent dGPU.
if M2 pro ran great M3 pro would run great too but keep in mind the M3 pro dues swap 2 of the cpu cores from performance to eco. and gpu cores from 19 to 18. the cores ARE more efficient so I still think you’ll see gains, and if m2 was in return window you made right call cause you are gaining mesh shaders and RT cores which will be huge for OTHER and future games (not so much wow).
That said, the max is a much better over pro because it
- still has up to 400Mbps memory bandwidth
- has the most performance and effiicency cores, and more over doesn’t lose any perf cores either.
- is the most future proofing in all honesty. it won’t just play this expansion well it’ll play next one well too.
Yeah I hear you very tempting since I’ll convert all my tech to macOS
Let’s see how things test out
You seem to know your stuff, thank you! I got the M3 Max, but the 30 core lower end one…Do you have a monitor pairing you’d recommend? I was looking at flat, 32" or 34"
that really depends massively on what you need. you want most accurate color and vividly awsome HDR screen. or you want the best possible refresh rate for gaming. do you want 1080p 1440p or 2160p.
when I went monitor shopping i needed 120hz (didn’t care if it was higher, was still gonna set it to 120hz to make sure 60hz content still looked good). had to be 4k. variable refresh rate and HDR were bonus but not hard requirements. Did have to have most zones possible for full array local dimming so games like diablo 4 looked good without excess blooming.
What did you end up getting?
What are your thoughts on 4k vs 5k. I recently read that MacOS has better scaling with 5k. But 5k monitors are a bit pricy and typical run 60hz.
Both those resolutions work on power of two scaling. 4k will get you better framerates than 5k, which is a significant jump in pixels to push. The higher the resolution you go, the lower you’ll need to dip into the resolution scale with FSR in order to eke out good, usable framerates.
I will get that one or just get a m2 pro with 32 gbs, let me know how your thermals are with wow when you get it 
I will add, at least as I understand it, the initial TSMC 3nm production process has serious yield issues with the current M3s, and it was only solved via a “minor” chip redesign. The reduced core count versions of the chips are an attempt to utilize otherwise failed chips (this is not a new practice – it’s been done several times before by just about everyone). There is supposedly a modified M3 coming. But they had to do something with all the already produced chips. If I were looking for an M3 machine, I’d wait or get a maxed-out M3 Max.