Not even close | M4 Max vs Razer Blade 18

Summary

In this video, the creator compares two high-end laptops: the M4 Max MacBook Pro and the Razer Blade 18, exploring their performance in various tests such as CPU benchmarking, web development, file speed, machine learning, and compiled projects. While the Razer features a powerful RTX 4090 GPU, the MacBook, with its Apple Silicon and high memory bandwidth, consistently outperforms in tasks like web development, code compilation, and even machine learning. The video highlights the Mac's advantages in speed and integration, especially with LLMs, and ultimately suggests that for certain professional workflows, the MacBook is the superior choice despite the Razer's premium hardware.

Takeaways

• 😀 The MacBook Pro M4 Max is being compared to the Razer Blade 18, focusing on their performance in software development, local LLM workflows, and other benchmarks.
• 😀 The Razer Blade 18, with a 14th Gen Intel Core i9 processor and RTX 490, underperforms in CPU benchmarks compared to the M4 Max, especially on battery power.
• 😀 The MacBook performs consistently across both battery and plugged-in modes, while the Razer Blade's performance drops significantly on battery and needs to be plugged in to show its best results.
• 😀 Speedometer 3.0, a developer benchmark, shows a clear performance advantage for the MacBook Pro, with a much higher score than the Razer Blade.
• 😀 The Razer Blade has slower JavaScript performance in various tests (like Babel, TypeScript, and Acorn) compared to the MacBook.
• 😀 The MacBook Pro excels in random reads and writes in disk speed tests, whereas the Razer Blade's performance is relatively weaker in this area.
• 😀 Thunderbolt 5 on the MacBook Pro is faster for external disk speeds than the Razer Blade, particularly in random read and write operations.
• 😀 Despite the Razer Blade having Thunderbolt 5, it struggles with external drives in comparison to the Mac, showing poor performance with external storage devices.
• 😀 In a large NET project compilation test, the MacBook Pro completes the task faster (1:53) compared to the Razer Blade (2:52), even though both machines use .NET 9.
• 😀 When running Visual Studio on both devices, the MacBook Pro (through a virtual machine) outperforms the Razer Blade with a faster project creation and build time.
• 😀 In a Python benchmarking test, the MacBook Pro M4 Max beats the Razer Blade (RTX 490) in terms of execution time for the Mandelbrot algorithm, leveraging its efficient multi-core support.
• 😀 When running LLM tasks, the MacBook Pro demonstrates better performance, especially with the MLX model, outpacing the RTX 490-equipped Razer Blade in token processing speeds.

Q & A

How do the MacBook M4 Max and Razer Blade 18 compare in terms of CPU performance on battery?

Out of the box, the Razer Blade 18's Intel Core i9 processor performs poorly on battery, especially in its balanced power mode. In contrast, the MacBook M4 Max performs consistently well, whether plugged in or on battery, due to its optimized power settings.

What impact does changing the performance settings on the Razer Blade 18 have on CPU performance?

Switching the Razer Blade 18 to its best performance mode and plugging it in does improve its performance, but it still doesn't reach the level of the MacBook M4 Max, despite the Razer's more cores and higher power mode.

How did the MacBook M4 Max and the Razer Blade 18 perform in the Speedometer 3.0 benchmark test?

The MacBook M4 Max significantly outperformed the Razer Blade 18 in the Speedometer 3.0 web development benchmark, scoring 49.8 compared to the Razer's 23, highlighting the Mac's better performance in browser-based tasks.

Which device performs better in JavaScript-based workloads like Babel and TypeScript?

The MacBook M4 Max outperformed the Razer Blade 18 in all the JavaScript-based workloads like Babel, TypeScript, and Acorn, showing better overall performance in tasks that involve compiling JavaScript.

What advantage does the MacBook have over the Razer in terms of external storage speeds?

The MacBook M4 Max's Thunderbolt 5 interface provides significantly faster sequential read speeds for external drives, while the Razer Blade 18's external drive performance is slower, particularly in random read and write speeds.

How does Thunderbolt 5 on the MacBook compare to the Razer Blade's performance with external drives?

Thunderbolt 5 on the MacBook provides exceptional performance, achieving high speeds with external drives. The Razer Blade 18, while capable of Thunderbolt 5, performs poorly with external storage devices, especially in random access tasks.

In the context of large software compilations, which laptop performed better?

The MacBook M4 Max finished the large .NET project compilation significantly faster (1 minute 53 seconds) compared to the Razer Blade 18, which took 2 minutes 52 seconds. This demonstrates the Mac's advantage in handling large compilation tasks.

How did Visual Studio performance compare between the MacBook M4 Max and the Razer Blade 18?

The MacBook M4 Max, even running Visual Studio on a virtual machine through Parallels, outperformed the Razer Blade 18 with the native Intel Core i9, completing tasks faster, including creating and running a project.

How does Python performance compare between the two devices?

In a Python-based Mandelbrot algorithm benchmark, the MacBook M4 Max was faster, completing the task in 16 seconds compared to the Razer Blade 18's 21 seconds, showcasing the Mac's superior multi-core performance.

How do the GPUs of the MacBook M4 Max and Razer Blade 18 compare in machine learning tasks?

In machine learning tasks, the MacBook M4 Max's unified memory and Apple MLX framework provided faster performance, processing more tokens per second compared to the Razer Blade 18's Nvidia RTX 490, even in GPU-intensive tasks like running the Llama model.