Apple's M3 Chips Explained In Plain English (M3 vs Pro vs Max) For Non-Techies

hey it's Chris today I'm going to break down Apple's new M3 chips in very simple plain easy to understand language so that if you're buying a new Mac you know exactly what chip is right for you and your budget and needs so today we're going to be looking at the brand new M3 MacBook Pros where the cheapest M3 model you can get is the 14in for $15.99 if you want to upgrade from that to the M3 Pro you're going to have to spend an extra $400 $19.99 and then for the M3 Max you're going to have to spend an additional $1,200 above and beyond that for a price tag that starts at $31.99 so there's a $1,600 difference in price from the regular M3 all the way up to the M3 Max which might leave you wondering well what do I need number one and if I do spend more money what exactly do I get practically speaking well this video has you covered we're just going to start by breaking down in the simplest terms possible who and which workflows and use cases and pieces of software would benefit from each of the these chips and then we'll move on to talking about what things like CPU GPU cores neural engine Ray tracing cashing and all of that stuff means as well just in case you want to go further and understand what you're actually paying for so here's how I break this down in terms of workflows the M3 is great for everyday workflows the M3 Pro is great for more demanding workflows with more multitasking and then the M3 Max is for extreme workflows so when I talk about the M3 and everyday work workflows who am I talking about I'm talking about people like knowledge workers or students or entrepreneurs or entry-level Gamers aspiring creatives keyword aspiring so for example the M3 is really going to shine if you're playing a game like Miss and you want really realistic lighting and shadows and Reflections all right so what do I mean when I say more demanding workflows for the M3 Pro well I'm talking about more demanding creative work more demanding coding more demanding research perhaps and a lot of that more demanding isn't just power but also multitasking so if you're going to be using some Pro level apps and you're going to layer in maybe using more than one at a time as part of your workflow then the M3 Pro is really going to shine there for you with that multitasking so a good example would be a photographer who has to stitch together a bunch of really highresolution images into one pixel dense panoramic photo in Photoshop and then there's the M3 Max these are the people with extreme workflows people who are doing things like editing 3D environments or working with machine learning or training AI people are who are doing next level video editing you probably know if you fit into this category or not I'll just say that so if you're running processor intensive apps while also driving multiple monitors like you can see here then you're the type of person who can really take advantage of the M3 Max real quick before we go any further you know what's a huge upgrade learning how to be productive if you've never done that I've got a course for you it's called learning to be productive it's available from my course company the great onboarding and it will help you get more done in less time in the Apple ecosystem with less burnout you can upgrade your computer's Hardware all you want to but if you don't also upgrade the operating system running on your brain then you're not going to be fully optimized check it out it's 30% off right now linked up down in the description all right so as you're sitting there configuring a new Mac you should have a pretty decent idea at this point what you're aiming for and what's worth spending someone M on but if you want to know specifically what it is that you're paying for when you get the M3 let's break down a few of the buzzword that you saw at the event like what is inside these chips whenever Apple talks about new Chips they like to talk about CPU and GPU and percentages and cores but what does all that mean well you're going to get to put up with my terrible art skills for just a second because I want you to think of the CPU as the brain of your computer it thinks it solves problems and then the GPU is the artist of your computer it helps to create new pictures and videos so on Apple's website whenever the chips are mentioned you're also going to see some information about cores eight cores 12 cores 40 cores what does that mean cores it might be helpful for you to think of cores as workers within an office the office being the chip and the cores being represented here by my nice blue dots these are the CPU dots the CPU workers or the cores and these workers handle tasks like loading websites or running apps when we're talking about GPU or the graphical Processing Unit the cores there are special workers who are really good at making images and videos and those are represented here by my red dots beautiful I know so in our analogy here having more cores means having more workers so you can do more things at the same time or you could do some things faster so as you go up the ladder from M3 to Pro to Max there's a reason why more cores equals better performance because you have more workers more cores handling all the necessary tasks and loading up all the great graphics so you can see on the M3 you can go up to 8 cores CPU 10 cores GPU on the M3 Pro up to 12 core CPU up to 18 GPU and on the max up to 16 cores on the CPU and up to 40 on the GPU so in our office analogy the M3 has a small but capable team the M3 pro has a bigger team that can do more work and then the M3 Max has a bigger team that can do a lot of work super fast so as your shop if you only do simple tasks then a small team with a small room is all you really need but if you do a lot of big projects and need many tools then having a big team with a lot of room helps a lot and then sitting in the middle is the M3 Pro for people who sometimes do bigger projects and that leads us to the neural engine Apple's always talking about it neural engine this neural engine that I know most people are like it sounds cool it seems like it does something important but I don't know what it does the neural engine is like this calculator I've drawn down here at the bottom and it's super smart it helps the computer quickly solve puzzles especially ones with pictures and patterns so it comes in handy when you're editing your photos or when your computer needs to recognize your voice for instance the neural engine is kind of like having a puzzle Wiz available to your computer that helps it understand and work with complex patterns easily now all three of the M3 chips have this smart calculator built in the neural engine but the higher-end models are going to solve puzzles even faster fter making tasks quicker and smoother this illustration is getting a little bit Bonkers I realize but now it's time to talk about Hardware accelerated raate tracing in a way that your average person can understand all the M3 chips have this it's something that game developers in particular love it's great for realistic Imaging apps or creating immersive scenes for instance and for this one I just want you to imagine a nice Pond and then you can imagine if you toss a stone into the pond that's going to create some ripples right that go all throughout the lake and bounce off of things maybe there's a lily pad in the pond here and those ripples are going to bounce off of the lily pad and reflect around well those ripples are kind of like rays of light in a computer World basically when you see a computer generated environment the computer is tracing where the Rays of simulated light are going and where they're bouncing and reflecting so if you have a ray of light coming in from over here and it bounces off of me and goes somewhere else the computer is tracing that and a bunch of other Rays all at the same time to make sure that everything's looking right and good within the environment so when Apple says in a first there's now Hardware accelerated raate tracing available with the M3 lineup what they're saying is there's a special part of the computer that helps to trace those Rays super fast makes everything really nice and smooth so why does it matter for your games for your movies for your designs if you do anything with any of those things then the hardware accelerat raate tracing could be a big benefit Now by this point if you thought you'd escaped my amazing terrible explanation illustrations there's one left we're going to talk a little bit about Dynamic caching that was a buzzword that you heard at the event with the help of this beautiful desk if you're somebody who uses Pro apps at all or if you're going to do any gaming at all this is something that's relevant because what it does is optimize GPU performance you remember the GPU workers from earlier the technical definition for dynamic caching is that it speeds up memory allocation in real time for quicker processes I know a bunch of people don't get that so look at this desk this is a magic desk and it moves needed desk supplies to the top drawer automatically for easy access so as you switch tasks the desk drawers magically rearrange themselves so maybe you're going to work on something that needs some art supplies from this drawer well that's anticipated and the magic desk moves what you need up to the top where you can use it so your needed tools are always handy Dynamic caching with the M3 chips is exactly the same it quickly provides information to the cores the workers which speeds up their work right if it basically just ensures that needed tools are easily accessible so you can optimize your performance in various projects so if you're coming from an older Apple chip and you're like well what really are the differences here there are some differences and they're actually useful I know this video is a little bit different but I also know there are people who are going to get to the order page and be like I don't know what to get and I hope that this at least steered you in the right direction in terms of which of these chips is right for you one thing to keep in mind though on that purchase page if you plan on using this device for several years into the future Apple stuff tends to keep for quite a long time then one reason that you might want to consider upgrading just a little bit maybe from the M3 to the pro is so that as new apps come down the pipeline and as your usage of your device maybe upgrades or changes over time then you'll have that capability and things will feel a little Fresher a little newer a bit longer thanks for watching today I hope you enjoyed it don't forget to check out the course and our newsletter those are both linked up down below and I'll catch you in the next video later

Channel: DailyTekk

Views: 25,490

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Id: 8nWuGvrijrk

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2023