I think this is like a somewhere near top of the line laptop
ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 for $7104.42 (skimping on the memory, as only 64 GB instead of 128GB)
I won't be getting that any time soon, but worth taking a look at the spec differences on just the CPU from what I'm using now for my dev work
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-13980HX-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4710HQ/m2030055vsm11499
At this price it's like why even be dedicated to laptop form factor? HP G2 mini server with A2000 is like half of the price of this. Small form factor desktop builds with any parts and even custom loop cooling are less than this. So many things cost less than this.
At this price point for a laptop I would unironically pick the M3 Max again, unbinned, 128Gb.
Yeah, its crazy high, nowhere near in my budget lol. It's like 4 years worth of all my IT related expenditures. The closest M3 Max runs about 5200, but I dont know how its GPU compares to the Nvidia RTX 5000. The GPU in the M3 certainly uses slower memory which is an initial indicator. I was really just checking a thinkpad with max specs to see what kind of pricing that turns out to be. In reality if I ever needed high end GPU, i'd separate from laptop dev duties to be less constrained.
1TB - $4,699
2TB - $5,099
4TB - $5,699
8TB - $6,899
Worth checking out Apple refurbs if you're looking to buy into the cult of redundancy.
That being said, you have to hunt the options to find one with the right specs. Most Apple users aren't buying the top specs with 1TB hard drives, sadly.
How an M3 Max's GPU compares to an A5000 is entirely dependent on your use-cases.
