Head-to-Head Showdown

Apple Mac Studio (M5 Max, 128GB, 2026) vs NVIDIA DGX Spark (GB10, 128GB)

Comparing ARM architecture against ARM for local AI inference. Review generation throughput, memory architecture, and runner compatibility.

Select Any Two Systems to Compare Head-to-Head

System A (Left)

System B (Right)

System A

Apple Mac Studio (M5 Max, 128GB, 2026)

Apple M5 Max (18-core CPU, 40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators)

128 GB MemoryARM~81.4 t/s

System B

NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip (20-core Arm CPU + Blackwell GPU)

128 GB MemoryARM~36.2 t/s

Specification	Apple Mac Studio (M5 Max, 128GB, 2026)	NVIDIA DGX Spark (GB10, 128GB)
Architecture	ARM	ARM
Processor	Apple M5 Max (18-core CPU, 40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators)	NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip (20-core Arm CPU + Blackwell GPU)
Operating System	macOS	DGX OS (Linux)
System RAM / Unified Memory	128 GB	128 GB
GPU-Usable Memory (VRAM or unified)	96 GB	110 GB
Memory Bandwidth	614 GB/s	273 GB/s
Memory Type & Bandwidth	Unified Memory (up to 614 GB/s)	Unified LPDDR5X (273 GB/s)
NPU Acceleration (TOPS)	Not listed	Not listed
Small models (3–7B)	Yes (Compatible)	Yes (Compatible)
8B models (Qwen3 8B)	Yes (Compatible)	Yes (Compatible)
Estimated 8B Generation Speed	~81.4 t/s	~36.2 t/s
Recommended Max Context	128k tokens	128k tokens
Power Consumption Envelope	20-200W	up to 240W

The buying and sizing guides that explain the numbers above.