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The MacBook Air gets an M3 upgrade (www.theverge.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/apple_enthusiast

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I wonder how the thermals will be. My M3 max definitely runs hotter than my M1 Max did, but isn’t a problem with a fan

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble 6 points 4 months ago

The M2 was basically just an overclocked M1 with a few extra cores and it ran fine with it's reduced cooling capacity. The M3, especially tuned down for the Air should perform great for what it is.

[–] brlemworld 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I've seen YouTube videos of people putting thermal tape inside of it and getting better performance and less heat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I’m nervous about long term battery health with that mod, also lap comfort

[–] abhibeckert 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Are you sure you're measuring that right?

My understanding is with a fixed workload (e.g. compress a specific video file as part of a youtube video upload) then the M3 is faster, draws less battery power, and generates less heat.

But if you play a computer game with M1 running at 30fps but the M3 runs at 60fps... then yeah, the M3 will be hotter and draw more power. But it's also doing twice as much work. Drop the graphics settings down, so that the M1 and M3 are both able to hit 60fps (in a game where you can cap the frame rate), then the M3 will be cooler and use less power.

And the difference could be significant, especially if the M3 is fast enough to shut down the performance cores and do everything on the "efficiency cores". Those cores use a lot less power since they are designed to run on an smartphone sized battery.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

While you’re definitely right the M3 is more efficient for day to day, all I know is when I boot up BG3 the fans are louder than they were on my M1, and ofc I’m going to push both machines to their max that’s what I paid for!

[–] btmoo 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

how does bg3 play on a non-pro/max machine? Is it doable?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I have the m3 max, but my partner has an m2 air (24gb memory) we’ve been playing together and it plays great! For the air settings on mostly high and ultra except shadows at medium, resolution set to native on the built in display with FSR set to performance taa on and a frame rate cap of 30. It holds a very solid 30 for extended sessions. Turning the settings lower than high/ultra don’t seem to have any performance benefit so it didn’t seem worth it to try and hit 60, which is ok for a game like this. I wouldn’t try playing it on a 4k monitor/tv or anything like that, which my m3 max has no trouble with at perfect 60 with everything turned the max, fsr on quality. I bet an m3 pro would be able to hit 60 on the built in display, maybe not on a 4k monitor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah, they're probably using the increased power -- they weren't running 3 instances of stable diffusion on the m1