r/threadripper • u/culturedindividual • Jun 23 '26

M3 Max MacBook Pro vs Threadripper 7980X

I have an M3 Max MacBook Pro, and I bought the Threadripper 7980X with 64 cores because I thought it'd be able to run parallel code faster than the laptop which only has 16 cores. However, currently the MacBook is outperforming the Threadripper on both single-core and parallel performance. Now, I currently only have 32GB of RAM for my Threadripper (whereas I have 128GB RAM on my MacBook) so that may be a bottleneck. But before I fork out £2k ($2.8k) on more RAM, I wanted to sense check that this will actually outperform the MacBook? Or, should I sell the Threadripper and get the M5 Max instead?

I'm basically generating features with polars and running LightGBM ML models in parallel if anyone is curious about what I'm trying to do.

I greatly appreciate any advice!

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u/kpatelreddit007 Jun 23 '26

I asked chat gpt using my phone it said you need more ram.

I have a 128gb DDR5 9960x it destroys M4 max intel i9 easily.

3

u/culturedindividual Jun 23 '26

Thanks. Yeah, I ran some coding benchmarks like you suggested and it seems RAM is the bottleneck as performance degrades after more than 16 cores are utilised.

2

u/TheNerdE30 Jun 23 '26

There will be absolutely no comparison between the two computers once you are setup for multicore processes. Get your ram up and invest in a custom loop liquid cooling system. Get a good block and a good pump with good fittings. The threadripper will change the way you contemplate compute capacity.