Hi - It looks like Enscape for Mac, for Vectorworks, is ok run on Apple M3 chipsets? If so, can you please advise what are the recommended system specs for operation.?
Am looking to upgrade to my Mac and knowing which chipsets are best, will determine selection.
Thank in advance.
@cad_monkey_2 , thanks a lot for your inquiry.
We’ve ordered Macs with M3 chips internally already, but we’re still awaiting an estimated time of arrival. Until they arrive, we haven’t been able to conduct any tests. However, we anticipate that the M3s will likely perform at least as well as, if not better than, the M1 and M2 models, although we currently lack concrete data on the performance boost.
So in this regard there should be not reason why we wouldn’t support Macs with M3 chips in the near future officially as well, but be aware that there may currently be some incompatibility issues and such occurring.
Just so you’re aware, you can also always reach out to us in case of issues (crashes, freezes and similar) via the feedback button: https://learn.enscape3d.com/blog/knowledgebase/using-the-feedback-button/
This allows our technical support team to check out your logs/machine information to troubleshoot any problems further.
Last but not least you can also check out our dedicated system requirements here, which will not include any M3 models so far yet though.
Based on many reviews and other infos, I will rather wait for M4 or save some money and go for M2. From my point of view the only option for M3 will be M3 max in Apple studio. From the thermals, disk speeds, overall performance it seems to me like the 3nm process was not that refined before they produced this batch of M3 chips…don’t want to say that it’s bad, but definitely not my choice and I think not worth to invest over m2 or m1….
Hmmm, in Apps that already support M3 well, like Blender or some render engines,
so far it looks like M3 Max is faster than a M2 Ultra.
CPU is quite ok too.
M1 did not scale well so was underwhelming for Max and Ultra.
M2 wasn’t much faster than M1 but finally scaled well and therefore made Mac Studios useful.
And M3 finally brought RT hardware acceleration and dynamic memory,
which seems to work great also.
Regarding this development and power differences in Mx versions,
so far I did not see any really valid offers of price reduced M1 machines over M2 versions.
And so I would not expect that for M2 vs M3 Studios too.
(Unlikely someone will sell these for half the MSRP or less)
But of course, if it is not urgent and you can wait for another year or two,
M4s will be better than M3 again.
Let me show you some spoilers. We have finally got some m3 macbooks and ran some basic benchmarks. This is one of our test scenes. Dynamic resolution is disabled, so these are not FPS you will see in release version (we try to maintain at least 60 FPS everywhere), but this setup makes all chips work in the same resolution to have a fair comparison.
These are three macbooks. Even mac mini with the same chips show very different results from what macbooks show, which may be related to the display resolution or whatever - we did not investigate yet.
Summary: m1 max is roughly equal m3 pro in Enscape.
Sounds reasonable,
especially as now the M3 Pro is a “degraded” Pro with a smaller chip vs previous M Pros
(to better fit in the middle between M3 pure and M3 Max)
Alexander thanks alot. Well seems like I was quite wrong in pure power. On the other side are thermals and other stuff.
Zoomer-thank you very much for your professionalism. I have personal experience only with M1 family from basic to ultra. And ultra and max in studio was overkill for my work. So I’m still with the pro and based on need of portability in MacBook pro 14. As far as I see all tests and reviews the thermals are much higher so the fan speeds/noise what is no go zone for me. Therefore I gave such advice. Also I read about the first TSMC batch of chips done by 3nm which where ordered by Apple and after/during the production they realised that the process is not as refines as the were thinking. Anyt seems like my knowledge is far less then yours so I keep
Listening and not giving advices. 
M1 at presentation and my M1 Mini 16 GB were overwhelming.
M1 Max and Ultra not that much because of scaling issues caused by a too small cache.
M2 also looked like just adding a few cores and some overclocking with more heat
to bring a noticeable improvement of about 15% here and there.
And when A17 3nm came I also wondered why there are no architectural improvements
visible. Only slightly faster again but no more battery life in on iPhones or M3 in MBPs.
But in real life, Blender GPU rendering benchmarks, with M2 Max/Ultra’s better scaling
made the M2 Ultra twice as fast as M1 Ultra.
OK, this was just finally fixing the scaling problem, not a real improvement. But for me it
does not make sense to buy a reduced price M1 Ultra Studio, for a reduced price similar to
a current M2 Max, which has similar real world performance but newer WIFI and such things.
Same for M2 vs M3.
M1 Max and Ultra was a bad M1 deal, but M2 Ultra got finally a reasonable “workstation”.
M3 did not deliver the expectations of finally going 3 nm, which we honestly expected
already for the larger M1 SoCs already. CPU cores again not improved, just a few more
cores and maybe some extra heat again.
But M3 RT hardware acceleration, even in an Apple first generation release
(basically already a 2nd release, if you count in the fail of adding RT to A16/M2)
and Dynamic Memory, when supported or even optimized work really well and bring
a real advantage for M3s.
Overall M3 is a bit faster as usual but for GPU it looks like it is more something like
double as fast. M3 is basically finally the SoC I initially expected the larger M1s to be.
But what is more important for me that I have some trust that the hard Apple times from
2012-2020 are over, where they left power or pro users left in the rain with a trash can
that was disappointing at release and not upgraded but sold for the same price for
6 years.
Now it looks again like Apple offers upgrades and improvements as soon as available,
so you can buy/upgrade to a new Mac Pro mobile/desktop at any point you need one.
Yes, they will be better in a year or few months again, but at the moment you get
the best available and not only a shelf warmer.
For the initial question …
Yes, of course.
M3 is again a usual little bit faster than previous M SoC releases.
Usually available for a similar price as its predecessors.
And once App optimizations for new M3 SoC features establish,
you can expect even a bit more acceleration.
Thanks
