Comment by Miraste
1 day ago
That's also because of software. Apple deprecated OpenCL in MacOS eight years ago. In productivity software with solid Metal implementations, like Blender, the M4 Max is on par with the top of Nvidia's (mobile) 5xxx line, except with much more VRAM.
No software fix exists, Apple's GPUs are architecturally limited to raster efficiency (and now, matmul ops). It's frankly bewildering that a raster-optimized SOC struggles to decisively outperform a tensor-optimized CUDA system in 2026.
I get the feeling you had a specific use case that didn't work well with Apple GPUs? I'd be curious what it was. The architecture does have some unusual limitations.
By software problem, though, I meant referencing OpenCL benchmarks. No one in 2026 should be using OpenCL on macOS at all, and the benchmarks aren’t representative of the hardware.