Here's me trying to justify this when I can run frontier models in the cloud for less than the monthly finance charge for this beast.
New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
71–80 of 570 posts
Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#72Due to pricing insanity (not that Apple prices weren’t insane before the ram/ssd shortages) I’m not in the market but I do wonder if my next computer should be a Mac Studio instead of a MBP that lives its life docked. Might be better to just run a Studio and Neo for the very few times I actually need remote capabilities.
Do it! I went with the Mini/Neo combo. I don't need MBP power when out and about. When at home, the Mini is all I use.
Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#73Due to pricing insanity (not that Apple prices weren’t insane before the ram/ssd shortages) I’m not in the market but I do wonder if my next computer should be a Mac Studio instead of a MBP that lives its life docked. Might be better to just run a Studio and Neo for the very few times I actually need remote capabilities.
Laptops can't do agentic engineering. They get hot as hell and battery drains instantly. I think this will promote a switch to desktops for the next couple of years, until we have new mobile chips.
Are you referring specifically to agentic engineering with locally hosted models?
Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#74If I were to get one of these, realistically what is the most advanced AI model I could run locally?
Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#75Due to pricing insanity (not that Apple prices weren’t insane before the ram/ssd shortages) I’m not in the market but I do wonder if my next computer should be a Mac Studio instead of a MBP that lives its life docked. Might be better to just run a Studio and Neo for the very few times I actually need remote capabilities.
If all you want to do is remote into your desktop, Neo seems like overkill. Why not just get a $200 Chromebook and save yourself $500?
Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 10 grand for 256GB memory. A NVIDIA RTX 6000, 96 GB at 1.7 TB/s, is 13 grand. This 256 GB at 1.2 TB/s Mac is extremely competitive, it will be sold out everywhere.
How's the compute side now, I wonder? Because while the Ultras have impressive memory bandwidth for inference, processing prompts still takes a dog's age on my M3 Ultra. I heard the M5 makes some strides forward in this area, though, and the M7 in particular promises to go a lot further.
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Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#77Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#78It seems super reasonably priced to me. It's only twice as expensive as my first Mac which only had 128K of memory.
That came with a monitor and floppy drive.
Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same thought, I grabbed a studio two years ago for this reason and it’s been great. 99% of the time lack of portability isn’t a concern. Every now and then (e.g. travel) I notice the limitation, but it’s not much of an inconvenience to just not do some work for a bit.
Plus remote work is getting easier and easier. There are so few instances when I'm not able to get online. If we lived in a world where hardware were getting cheaper, it might make sense to splurge. In this environment I think the Neo is perfect.
Build quality of the Neo is extremely good, I love the keyboard — it’s more tactile and reminds me of early 2010s MacBooks.
I’ll be selling my M4 MBA soon, I genuinely use the Neo more. Huge difference in typing experience.
Great repairability is a plus. It was super easy, and actually fun to open. Felt like unboxing an Apple product. Applied the thermal paste mod for $10 which works excellently; I’ve had it shortly after launch.
And I love the notchless display, even if I wished the color gamut was a bit better.
Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
#80Here's me trying to justify this when I can run frontier models in the cloud for less than the monthly finance charge for this beast.
If you like to experiment with training / finetuning / etc on LLMs, these are actually incredibly ‘cheap’.
1.2TB/s memory bandwidth unlocks a lot with 256GB unified, and agentic AI is pretty good at optimising performance.
For comparison, to get 256GB with NVIDIA, you’re looking at a DIY workstation build (need pcie lanes), and like $70k?
The spark’s ~250gb/s bandwidth doesn’t really count here.