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Comment by brcmthrowaway

20 hours ago

This doesn't get talked about enough - the GPU is weak, weak, weak. And anyone who can fix them will go to a serious AI company (for 2-3x the salary).

21 comments

brcmthrowaway

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jorvi  20 hours ago

The GPU is monstrously good. Depending on the workload, the M1 series GPU using 120W could beat an RTX 3090 using 420W.

Same with the CPU. Linux compiled faster on an M1 than on the fastest Intel i9 at the time, again using only 25% of the power budget.

And the M-series has only gotten better.

It is kind of sad Apple neglects helping developers optimize games for the M-series because iDevices and MacBooks could be the mobile gaming devices.

  • AuthAuth  16 hours ago

    >the M1 series GPU using 120W could beat an RTX 3090 using 420W

    You're cooked if you actually believe this

    • scottjg  10 hours ago

      I very recently ran the numbers on these GPUs for an upcoming blog post. The token generation performance is bad, but the prefill performance is _really_ bad.

      For a Qwen 3.6 35B / 3B MoE, 4-bit quant:

      - parsing a 4k prompt on a M4 Macbook Air takes 17 seconds before generating a single token.

      - on an M4 Max Mac Studio it's faster at 2.3 seconds

      - on an RTX 5090, it's 142ms.

      RTX 5090 uses more power than an M4 Max Mac Studio but it's not 16x more power.

    • wolvoleo  15 hours ago

      Somehow Apple has always been able to sell their stuff as somehow Magic. Remember the megahertz myth? Apple hertzes and apple bytes are much better than PC hertzes and bytes because they are made by virgin elves during a full moon.

      2 replies →

    • jorvi  15 hours ago

      On Geekbench 5, the M1 hits 483 FPS and the RTX 3090 hits 504 FPS.

      There are other workloads where the M1 actually beats the 3090.

      Apple does plenty of hyping but it's always cute when irrational haters like you put them down. The M1 was (well, is) a marvel and absolutely smokes a 3090 in perf per watt.

      1 reply →

  • bigyabai  19 hours ago

    The GPUs are bottom-barrel for compute-focused industries. It is mobile-grade hardware that arguably can't even scale to prior Mac Pro workloads.

    > The GPU is monstrously good. Depending on the workload, the M1 series GPU using 120W could beat an RTX 3090 using 420W.

    You're just listing the TDP max of both chips. If you limit a 3090 to 120W then it would still run laps around an M1 Max in several workloads despite being an 8nm GPU versus a 5nm one.

    > It is kind of sad Apple neglects helping developers optimize games for the M-series

    Apple directly advocated for ports like Death Stranding, Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil internally. Advocacy and optimization are not the issue, Apple's obsession over reinventing the wheel with Metal is what puts the Steam Deck ahead.

    Edit (response to matthewmacleod):

    > Bold of them to reinvent something that hadn't been invented yet.

    Vulkan was not the first open graphics API, as most Mac developers will happily inform you.

    • to11mtm  15 hours ago

      > Vulkan was not the first open graphics API, as most Mac developers will happily inform you.

      OpenGL had become too unmanagable which is why devs moved to DirectX.

      Unless you meant a different one?

    • brcmthrowaway  18 hours ago

      > The GPUs are bottom-barrel for compute-focused industries. It is mobile-grade hardware that arguably can't even scale to prior Mac Pro workloads.

      Surprised Apple didn't create a TPU-like architecture. Another misstep from John Gianneadrea.

      3 replies →