MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

Post by nicoburns » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

CrazyStat wrote: post #202

re-thc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aren't the OpenClaw enjoyers buying Mac Minis because it's the cheapest thing which runs macOS That's likely only part of the reason. Mac Mini is now "cheap" because everyone exploded in price. RAM and SSD etc have all gone up massively. Not the mention Mac mini is easy out of the box experience.

It's not cheap, though. Two weeks ago I bought a computer with a similar form factor (GMKtec G10). Worse CPU and GPU but same 16GB memory and a larger SSD for 40% the price of a base mac mini ($239 vs $599). It came with Windows preinstalled, but I immediately wiped that to install linux. Even a used (M-series) mac mini is substantially more expensive. It will cost me about an extra penny per day in electricity costs…

Post by barumrho » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 3:23 PM UTC

dirk94018 wrote: post #37

On M4 Max 128GB we're seeing ~100 tok/s generation on a 30B parameter model in our from scratch inference engine. Very curious what the "4x faster LLM prompt processing" translates to in practice. Smallish, local 30B-70B inference is genuinely usable territory for real dev workflows, not just demos. Will require staying plugged in though.

Post by abiraja » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

pwython wrote: post #118

Well that's. Just. Great. I bought a 64GB M4 Max MBP last month. I'm past the 14-day return window. I figured the M5 was near, but assumed M5 Max would come a bit later. Not sure where I came up with that.

Post by NetMageSCW » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #208

klausa wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the "new" Performance cores are just "renamed" "E" / "Efficiency" cores; Apple has retroactively renamed the baseline M5 nomenclature to say it has "10-core CPU with 4 super cores and 6 efficiency cores"; so they're clearly keeping the "efficiency cores" nomenclature around. I think this is a new design, with Apple having three tiers of cores now, similar to what Qualcomm has been doing for a while. I t…

Interesting. This is clearly a big CPU change if so. I wonder why no E cores. I’m sure E cores would be more efficient at OS tasks than the new performance cores. For example, 6 super, 8 performance, and 4 efficiency.

Post by rapfaria » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

pwython wrote: post #118

Well that's. Just. Great. I bought a 64GB M4 Max MBP last month. I'm past the 14-day return window. I figured the M5 was near, but assumed M5 Max would come a bit later. Not sure where I came up with that.