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Comment by traceroute66

7 hours ago

Not forgetting of course that an RTX5090 is what 600W+ ? And the Mac is probably half that at most ?

Certainly not forgetting wattage. A 5090 is 575W. The M5 Ultra Studio is 480W.

nvidia-smi -pl 450 for like a 4% reduction in throughput. I tend to set it around 350W because it's a comfortable temperature blowing on my legs under the desk without warming my office in the summer.

I put together this system two years ago, so it's a little out of date, but it only cost $3000 for the same performance and capability as an Ultra. I don't think I would spend $7000 to save 100W, though.

  • > nvidia-smi -pl 450 for like a 4% reduction in throughput.

    Yeah people don't pay enough attention to those settings IMO. The first thing I do when I set up a new machine (or upgrade my OS) is to restore all my powersaving configs.

    For example I've got all but one of my virtual desktops that put the CPU in powersave mode: I don't need max Ghz when browsing the Web, not even on demand. But when I switch to the virtual desktop where my development environment is, then I want power on demand.

    Now I don't do it to save the planet: I do it because I love a quieter computing experience (coupled with Be Quiet! PSU and Noctua fans, this makes for a very quiet computer). That it consumes less electricity is a nice side-benefit.

When you are doing matrix math, compute is compute. Apple cant be more efficient due to physics. The only reason Macs are more efficient in general is that they have tightly bundled hw and sw for specific tasks.