Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Apple will let you buy more RAM for cheaper than Nvidia, but it won't be the same speed — it'll be ~20% slower than a 4090.


That's my point. I would absolutely be willing to suffer a 20% memory bandwidth penalty if it means I can put 200% more data in the memory buffer to begin with. Not having to page in and out of disk storage quickly make those 20% irrelevant.


If you have enough 4090s, you don't need to page in and out of disk: everything stays in VRAM and is fast. But it's true that if you just want it to work, and you don't need the fastest perf, Apple is cheaper!


How _exactly_ do I keep 50+ Gigabytes of data in the 4090's VRAM without paging back and forth to disk?


As the person you’re replying to said, by having multiple 4090s. 3090s work pretty well also, and are less than half the cost of 4090s.


How is that relevant when the discussion from the start was about comparing a two year old Mac with a two year old GPU as a cost-benefit discussion.

In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards without swapping to disk when the Mac in question has 64GB (also theoretically) available?


You seem confused. Please feel free to read my post near the top of this very chain of comments, where I specifically compare a Mac Studio to a machine with 6 to 8 Nvidia GPUs. That was the discussion “from the start.”

> In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards

No one was talking about only two cards.


> Mac Studio to a machine with 6 to 8 Nvidia GPUs.

That post read like a joke comparison and still does. Can you elaborate how it is relevant?


What seems like a joke about it? And relevant to what, exactly?

The parent of my initial comment in this thread said: "For inference, Apple chips are great due to a high memory bandwidth... It's a cost effective option if you need a lot of memory plus a high bandwidth."

My post was attempting to explain at a high level how 1) Apple SoCs do not really have high memory bandwidth compared to a cluster of GPUs, and 2) you can actually build that cluster of GPUs for the same cost or cheaper than a loaded Mac Studio, and it will drastically outperform the Mac.

If you want specifics on how to build such a GPU cluster, you can search for "ROMED8-2T 3090" for some examples.

I hope this helps.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: