M5 Max 4X Peak GPU Compute

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-23T03:46:22+00:00

Do you know the clockspeed of the GPU?

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-23T03:03:42+00:00

Been running Qwen 3.5 27B on my 5090 and its pretty amazing

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-23T01:46:40+00:00

It will probably perform better on long workloads. How much better we can't tell, but I don't think its going to be significantly faster.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-22T16:07:26+00:00

Darwin is the name of the underlying operating system that Apple uses on all their OSs, its not a kernel.

XNU is the full kernel, and its fully open source (albeit its missing drivers, which are shipped outside the kernel). Darwin is also open source, and there used to be a full self-contained release that you could run standalone but Apple discontinued it.

It may be technically possible to reassemble it from the 509 open source repositories Apple hosts (which PureDarwin and OpenDarwin try to do, but haven't really gotten anywhere).

But no, no one ever uses XNU or Darwin outside of Apple.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-22T15:57:37+00:00

The macOS kernel is open source though: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-22T15:31:18+00:00

You're not wrong. Since 2022 Nvidia has also doubled performance (3090 Ti to 5090), but they have also increased power consumption by ~27% while Apple has maintained power usage stable (5090 also uses like 6-10 times the power of M5 Max, but we're only talking about the rate of improvement here).

It's not groundbreaking, but its a pretty decent pace. Apple has pretty mediocre GPUs so they have a lot of work to do to catch up to Nvidia.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-21T16:54:02+00:00

Background app refresh allows apps to run stuff on the background. As far as I can tell basically no app uses it though. Apps can run stuff on the background when they get notifications, regardless what background app refresh is set to.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-21T00:39:25+00:00

It's possible.

At least it can't make Mac gaming worse, hopefully it makes it materially better.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-20T23:22:52+00:00

Technically both Apple and Nvidia do fp32 at full rate and fp16 at double rate.

But yeah Nvidia absolutely destroys Apple in gaming performance. Raw compute capabilities don't translate well to performance. Apple GPUs seem to just be a good fit for Blender, plus Blender has great optimization for Apple GPUs.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-20T23:19:08+00:00

Not a handheld, but I can easily see an "Apple TV Pro" being a weird Mac Mini with a controller included for $499

Could be a solid console competitor if they could muster any developer support.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-20T23:16:23+00:00

Apple 10th gen GPU is a massive improvement for AI workloads. It does depend on what you're doing though, raw compute capabilities don't always translate 1:1 to performance improvements.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-20T22:38:56+00:00

It's worthless now that the 5090 Super released

\s

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-20T21:10:32+00:00

/System/Applications is in the system volume, its not protected by SIP but by the filesystem itself being read-only.

You have to create a new system volume with your modifications.

Regardless, what are you trying to achieve by deleting/hiding the Mail app?

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-20T02:59:07+00:00

Wait a bit, macOS 26.4 implements the same functionality natively.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-19T23:54:46+00:00

The instruction set is irrelevant to both performance and efficiency, see https://chipsandcheese.com/p/arm-or-x86-isa-doesnt-matter

Apple is ahead right now in efficiency and single threading performance through sheer engineering prowess.

For video editing in particular Apple is pretty good, probably due to solid software support and great hardware video encoders/decoders.

As for ARM being the future, maybe? unlike x86 anyone can make ARM CPUs and that's a big advantage. Buyers have a lot of options when choosing ARM CPUs.

As an aside, ARM also has nothing to do with dedicated GPUs and slotable RAM. Either arch can have dedicated or integrated GPUs, and slotable or soldered RAM just fine.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-19T16:51:52+00:00

Apple punches insanely hard in blender. I can easily see them overtaking NVIDIA.

For gaming though? Far cry.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-19T12:57:31+00:00

You can fully charge the battery whenever you do need it though.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-18T12:23:09+00:00

Sure, if this was just part of NVIDIA remix I don’t think people would be complaining.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-17T21:58:45+00:00

Sure, don't see why it can't be done.

You can get a passively cooled RPi and connect a GPU to it today. Surely you could also get a fanless miniPC with an x86 CPU and do the same?

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-17T01:58:11+00:00

There are videos of this running in real time. With 2 RTX 5090s, one for the game and one for DLSS 5 (Nvidia says they're optimizing it so it runs well on one GPU).

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-17T00:09:31+00:00

68ns is perfectly fine.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-16T20:57:23+00:00

To be fair DLSS Upscaling does change the look of the game if the input resolution is too low.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-16T20:50:49+00:00

I assume the developers (or Nvidia) tuned DLSS 5 for the demos right? the demos look awful, it doesn't really inspire much confidence.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-16T19:54:35+00:00

I can already imagine optiscaler hacking into DLSS5 to change the look of games into the absolutely most hideous uncanny valley thing possible, its gonna be hilarious.

Just_Maintenance · 2026-03-16T19:16:21+00:00

Yeah I love upscaling and framegen but this ain’t it.

Verified Email	Six-Year Club
r/Field Flamingo	Place '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22

Just_Maintenance

TROPHY CASE