These are desktop cards. Apple is comparing laptops to laptops.
So I still don't know why their benchmark is a 2.5-year-old laptop.
I'm also noticing that Apple didn't list the generation of i9 in that marketing disclaimer, so this makes me think they're also possibly comparing against 2- to 3-year-old CPUs.
> Testing was conducted by Apple in November and December 2022 using preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M2 Max, 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, 96GB of RAM, and 8TB SSD, as well as a production Intel Core i9-based PC system with NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 graphics with 24GB GDDR6 and the latest version of Windows 11 Pro available at the time of testing, and a production Intel Core i9-based PC system with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics with 16GB GDDR6 and the latest version of Windows 11 Home available at the time of testing.
To be clear, NVIDIA (and Intel) use identical names for their desktop parts and for their laptop versions. There is the 3080 Ti (GA102-225-A1) which has 10240 shaders clocked at 1365 mhz and a 350 watt TDP, and the 3080 Ti (GA103) for laptops which has 7424 shaders clocked at (up to) 1230 mhz and a (up to) 150 watt TDP. The former does about 305 fps in userbench and the latter does 193 fps. (Until it thermal throttles) https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Nvidia-RTX-3080-Ti/Rating/4115 https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/1775790/NVIDIA-GeFor... There is an equivalent bait and switch for the Intel i9 desktop vs mobile.
It's unfortunate that Apple isn't making themselves 100% entirely clear on this, but to be fair, neither is the competition.