iMac M3 or Mac Mini M2 Pro??

[IngerMan]

I am using this

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN1LQ18X?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

With a Crucial P5 1 GB, I am getting low 700's Read and low 800's write. Much less then the NVMe M.2 is capable of. But I am ok with that, I am using it for games, photo library and mobile backups.

 

[picpicmac]

I am using this ...

Have you suffered any of the dropout issues that some of the Amazon customers report?

 

[IngerMan]

Have you suffered any of the dropout issues that some of the Amazon customers report?

I have not, I been playing resident evil village from this drive, also my photo library. But I did not go with the Samsung drive, I prefer Crucial over Samsung. I went with

Crucial P5 Plus 1TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 Gaming SSD, up to 6600MB/s - CT1000P5PSSD8 Solid State Drive​

But as I stated since this is not powered I am getting 800 MBS which is good enough for playing games and photo library.

 

[Warped9]

Very interesting.

 

[picpicmac]

Very interesting.

He has a point, though he like many keep harping on a "slump" in Mac sales when the market reality for 2023 is that all vendors have seen a decline. It is expected to reverse in 2024, and Apple may have got a jump on that with their late-in-the-year M3 offerings.

 

[Warped9]

He has a point, though he like many keep harping on a "slump" in Mac sales when the market reality for 2023 is that all vendors have seen a decline. It is expected to reverse in 2024, and Apple may have got a jump on that with their late-in-the-year M3 offerings.

Yeah, I caught that point as well—everyone has had a slump, not just Apple.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'm thinking that the Mini m2pro will be the better performer.
You can pick a larger display size, also...

 

[Warped9]

M3 performance is generally on par with M2 Pro. M3 also has dynamic caching, ray tracing and mesh shading which M2 Pro does not have.

 

[Homy]

If you want to do some gaming or GPU heavy tasks Mac Mini with 19c GPU is definitely a better choice than M3 10c GPU. Dynamic caching, ray tracing and mesh shading won't help the performance with only half the GPU cores.

Here you can compare M3 10c GPU with M2 Pro 19c GPU. On iMac you have to run games at 1080p which looks awful on a retina display but with M2 Pro you can run at 1440p. In Metro Exodus iMac M3 gets 50-60 fps at 1080p high but M2 Pro gets about the same at 1440p Ultra.

M2 Pro has also 12-core CPU but M3 has 8 cores

 

[Homy]

M3 performance is generally on par with M2 Pro. M3 also has dynamic caching, ray tracing and mesh shading which M2 Pro does not have.

Mac Mini with M2 Pro 19c GPU is far better for gaming or GPU heavy tasks and has also 12-core CPU compared with iMac's 8-core M3. iMac M3 only has better single-core performance but worse multi-core and Metal scores. The only advantage is that for $300 you get a monitor and keyboard and mouse with iMac.

Mac mini (2023) - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Mac mini (2023) with an Apple M2 Pro processor.

browser.geekbench.com

Mac15,5 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Mac15,5 with an Apple M3 processor.

browser.geekbench.com

Mac14,12 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Mac14,12 with an Apple M2 Pro processor.

browser.geekbench.com

Mac15,5 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Mac15,5 with an Apple M3 processor.

browser.geekbench.com

 

[foo2]

I have not, I been playing resident evil village from this drive, also my photo library. But I did not go with the Samsung drive, I prefer Crucial over Samsung. I went with

Crucial P5 Plus 1TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 Gaming SSD, up to 6600MB/s - CT1000P5PSSD8 Solid State Drive​

But as I stated since this is not powered I am getting 800 MBS which is good enough for playing games and photo library.

Powered vs. not doesn't enter the picture.

The issue is that the connection this uses is simple USBC, which for Mac is limited to 10GB, or 1000MB/s, so your getting 800MB/s (given there's lots of other stuff using that 1000MB/s interface) isn't a surprise. It would further drop if you concurrently used other interfaces on the 'dock'.

To get best performance with an NVME disk, you might consider a TB4-NVME adapter, which is $80 or $90 and would give you perhaps 2800MB/s or so, even 3400MB/s. The TB4 interface is 40GB, or 4000MB/s - far faster than the Mac's USBC implementation. It would use one of your TB4 ports, obviously.

For most things, you'd likely not notice much difference, if any.

 

[Macaholic868]

At this point wait for the M4 Mac Mini and buy a nice 24” or 27” display to go with it. That’s the decision I made. I’d like to be able to game to the extent possible on a Mac and with the M3 you get ray tracing but since you can’t get an iMac with a Pro processor I’m wait in on the refreshed M4 Mac mini. That will have an integrated CPU that can do ray tracing with even better CPU performance than you’d get with the regular M3 processor that ships in iMacs. My 2017, 27” 5K Intel iMac with a Core i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM is getting long in the tooth. If you can get 6 years out of a home PC in this day and age you’re doing well.

 

[foo2]

At this point wait for the M4 Mac Mini and buy a nice 24” or 27” display to go with it. That’s the decision I made. I’d like to be able to game to the extent possible on a Mac and with the M3 you get ray tracing but since you can’t get an iMac with a Pro processor I’m wait in on the refreshed M4 Mac mini. That will have an integrated CPU that can do ray tracing with even better CPU performance than you’d get with the regular M3 processor that ships in iMacs. My 2017, 27” 5K Intel iMac with a Core i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM is getting long in the tooth. If you can get 6 years out of a home PC in this day and age you’re doing well.

I think the phrase "you get ray tracing" (and expecting something in games) is very suspect, to be kind. Blender, sure. For now I'd treat this as useless marketing lingo for a few years.

In most games, the M3 is faster than the M1, but only what one could expect with a normal 10-15% improvement in CPU/GPU per each generation, compounded. I've seen no gaming ray tracing benchmarks that would suggest significant power or capability.

The M4 is expected to be a bit of a jump over the M3 (ie perhaps > that normal 10-15% bump) based on what we see with the iPad Pro setup.

I'd argue many people can get far more than six years out of hardware; outside of games, most people rarely need to upgrade unless driven by pro use and profits (ie more work = more $); even older Macs are easily fast enough for browsing, TurboTax, and YouTube as long as you don't mind some fan noise.

 

[Macaholic868]

I think the phrase "you get ray tracing" (and expecting something in games) is very suspect, to be kind. Blender, sure. For now I'd treat this as useless marketing lingo for a few years.

In most games, the M3 is faster than the M1, but only what one could expect with a normal 10-15% improvement in CPU/GPU per each generation, compounded. I've seen no gaming ray tracing benchmarks that would suggest significant power or capability.

The M4 is expected to be a bit of a jump over the M3 (ie perhaps > that normal 10-15% bump) based on what we see with the iPad Pro setup.

I'd argue many people can get far more than six years out of hardware; outside of games, most people rarely need to upgrade unless driven by pro use and profits (ie more work = more $); even older Macs are easily fast enough for browsing, TurboTax, and YouTube as long as you don't mind some fan noise.

I agree in part. While it’s true that software, including games, haven’t be written to make use of hardware based ray tracing the fact that it’s in there now as a part of the base GPU and will continue to be moving forward means more and more software will be written to take advantage of it so I’d be weary of buying an older M class CPU without it if I were interested in AAA gaming on the Mac down the line. That is to say now that it’s out there, I don’t see why you wouldn’t go for an M3 of higher CPU that can do it.

 

[foo2]

I agree in part. While it’s true that software, including games, haven’t be written to make use of hardware based ray tracing the fact that it’s in there now as a part of the base GPU and will continue to be moving forward means more and more software will be written to take advantage of it so I’d be weary of buying an older M class CPU without it if I were interested in AAA gaming on the Mac down the line. That is to say now that it’s out there, I don’t see why you wouldn’t go for an M3 of higher CPU that can do it.

The problem with that argument is it will takes *years* to get to that point. We're really only in the past year or so seeing AS games; I think it will be years until we see anything that takes advantage of newer AS features, like the ultra-basic, ultra-low-end RT that I suspect is in the M3. If it takes until the M6 for RT to be any good compared to a basic nVidia 3060 or 4060 for games, how many games do you think will take advantage of it before then?

Heh! You used "AAA Gaming" and "Mac" in the same sentence! That's funny!

Seriously, I use Crossover/Whisky for Mac gaming, because outside of a few niches (old Resident Evil titles, maybe?) there's just not much there.

 

[Macaholic868]

The problem with that argument is it will takes *years* to get to that point. We're really only in the past year or so seeing AS games; I think it will be years until we see anything that takes advantage of newer AS features, like the ultra-basic, ultra-low-end RT that I suspect is in the M3. If it takes until the M6 for RT to be any good compared to a basic nVidia 3060 or 4060 for games, how many games do you think will take advantage of it before then?

Heh! You used "AAA Gaming" and "Mac" in the same sentence! That's funny!

Seriously, I use Crossover/Whisky for Mac gaming, because outside of a few niches (old Resident Evil titles, maybe?) there's just not much there.

I use Crossover as well for the limited Mac gaming that I do engage in. You’ll never hear the argument from me that if playing AAA games is something that’s important to you that you should buy a Mac. You either shouldn’t or you should be prepared to buy a Windows box for gaming and a Mac for productivity if you prefer MacOS as your OS otherwise.

We all know that if you want to play a range of AAA games and get the best performance for your money then you shouldn’t be looking at a Mac.

My argument is simply that if you’re buying a new Mac desktop that you’d like to keep for the next 5 - 7 years then you should do what you can now to try and future proof it as best you can.

I got 6 years out of my 2017 27” 5K iMac by spending extra money on an i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, an SSD and going with a make and model that had one of the best built-in GPU’s that I could land outside of going the eGPU route.

If not for Apple Intelligence requiring Apple Silicon I could easily get another year or maybe even two out of it thanks to OpenCore Legacy Patcher. I’ve got a MacBook Pro that is my primary computer. The iMac used to be but eventually I wanted a Mac laptop I could travel with.

I’m making a similar argument about maximizing the usable shelf life here. Knowing the M4 version of the Mac Mini is coming later this year and you’ll likely be able to get one with an M4 Pro processor you’d be nuts not to wait a few more months for that over going ahead and dropping the money on a system with an M2 Pro chip today.

 

[foo2]

My argument is simply that if you’re buying a new Mac desktop that you’d like to keep for the next 5 - 7 years then you should do what you can now to try and future proof it as best you can.

I just don't see this as worth spending extra for. RT is at such a basic level, and there's zero proof that it adds a thing to games; we literally don't have a game that uses it (do we?) so I don't think it's wise to add it to a purchase decision until there's some value proven.

knowing the M4 version of the Mac Mini is coming later this year and you’ll likely be able to get one with an M4 Pro processor you’d be nuts not to wait a few more months for that over going ahead and dropping the money on a system with an M2 Pro chip today.

Do we know that? This is my annoyance with Apple: Roadmaps unpredictable. Intel is as stable as the sun.

 

[colodane]

I think this decision will largely come down to the display you plan to use with the mini. If you already own a suitable display, then the decision will be much easier.

If you need to purchase a new display, the cost of the display could drive the decision.