What kind of performance boost do you get when you go from an M1 MacBook Air to an M3 Pro MacBook Pro? A pretty big one, if today’s MacBook Pro setup from an investor is any indication. They made sure to purchase a model with plenty of unified memory — 36GB — to ensure no number of open tabs would slow them down too much.
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M3 MacBook Pro with 36GB of memory supercharges investor’s setup
Stock trader and Redditor Diesel_Formula showcased the newly supercharged setup in a post entitled, “New M3 Pro!” Packing a hefty 36GB of unified memory, the 14-inch M3 Pro MacBook Pro replaced an M1 MacBook Air sporting the base 8GB of memory. And that had predictably great results for increased performance.
“Just got the new M3 Pro MacBook in space grey and it’s beautiful,” Diesel wrote. “I got the M3 Pro 11/14 Chip with 36GB RAM and 512GB Storage, coming from a MBA M1 8/512 and it’s a huge upgrade!”
If you’re not familiar with Diesel’s shorthand, “11/14” refers to the M3 Pro chip’s 11-core CPU and 14-core GPU. That’s the base level for M3 Pro, not to be confused with the base level chip, the plain M3 (the levels are M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max). Diesel would have had the option to pay another $200 for the 12/18 configuration on the M3 Pro chip, or go higher still with an M3 Max chip. The M3 Max chip maxes out at an epic 16/40 core configuration.
M3 Pro is the right chip for the job
Graphic: Apple
“I work in finance and do a lot of research and investing with 40+ tabs open at the same time, and other applications like TradingView, Whatsapp, Discord, Telegram, Spotify, 1password and more, so the RAM upgrade is massively helping me with productivity,” Diesel said, describing his computer use.
“Connect it to two external monitors, 4K60 and 2K 144Hz, and it does heat up while basic browsing with all displays connected but haven’t heard the fan go on yet,” they added. “I can play Minecraft in 240+ fps and 50-60fps with lite shaders but haven’t tried any games. Is the 36GB RAM a good combo with the 11/14 or should I have gotten the 12/18 or MAX chip?”
Generally, commenters agreed that Diesel picked the right configuration for their work. That’s mainly because the work does not seem graphics-intensive, so going for a loaded GPU doesn’t seem necessary. One person asked what TradingView is and suggested Diesel check the activity monitor at peak usage.
“TradingView is a charting software. It’s weirdly optimized for the M3 chip and uses 80% or more of my GPU, which heats up the laptop pretty quick,” Diesel said in reply. “Hopefully gets better in the future. I haven’t noticed any slowdowns and no swap has been used yet. The memory pressure has once peaked to the yellow but its 99% of the time and is 20-40% full 99% of the time. I haven’t purposely tried to max the RAM yet but the laptop uses 30GB of RAM most of the time.”
And don’t miss the cool table lamp some commenters asked about. It’s in the gear list below.
Photo: Diesel_Formula@Reddit.com
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If you would like to see your setup featured on Cult of Mac, send some high-res pictures to info+setups@cultofmac.com. Please provide a detailed list of your equipment. Tell us what you like or dislike about your setup, and fill us in on any special touches, challenges and plans for new additions.
This Apple laptop sports an M3 Pro chip (11‑core CPU and 14‑core GPU), a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR Display, 36GB unified memory and 1TB SSD storage.
