I ran the same Qwen3.6-35B-A3B at 256K context on an ASUS GX10 and a 64GB M2 Max.
The main gap was prefill. The Mac needed 23–28 minutes before the first output token. Full results:
1. Prefill
At 128K: GX10 TTFT 45.7s vs Mac 552.8s.
Decode: 40.6 vs 28.7 tok/s.
At 256K: GX10 127.5s vs Mac 1,541s median TTFT.
Decode differs 1.4x. Prefill differs 12x.
2. MLX 4-bit beat 3-bit, 6-bit AND 8-bit
4-bit: 76 tok/s, 3/3 coding, 12/12 retrieval.
3-bit: failed executable coding in every single seed.
8-bit: half the speed and worse retrieval (mangled citations, 9/12).
3. MTP is not a free speed switch
Same model, same Q4_K_M, same coding task, 3 seeds:
GX10 CUDA: +26.9% decode.
M2 Max Metal: −19.4%.
Correctness held for both (12/12 executable) but speed didn't.
Code:
Raw dataset: