Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 571 posts

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#181

Post by wombat-man »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #164
joshstrange wrote: post #7

Due 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.

At my current job, one of my biggest blunders was thinking "Let me just order the same hardware as most of my teammates to avoid unnecessary complications". Most, if not all, of our current work happens on remote cloud vms. Now I'm stuck with carrying a 3KG monstrosity to work.Every day. Absolutely no positives compared to my ThinkPad that weighed less than half in my previous job. Remote development is "good enough"…

Yeah I stepped down to a smaller MBP. the only reason I didn't go for an air is my home setup with dual monitors involves using the HDMI port. There probably is a dock or something out there though.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#182

Post by meric_ »

OneWhereWhy wrote: post #174

The thing that intrigues me the most is this: "Storage performance is up to twice as fast, with a next-generation SSD architecture built on PCIe Gen 6..." This is the first personal computer I've noticed that has PCIe Gen 6 storage. I've only seen enterprise PCIe Gen 6 SSDs up until now. Gen 5 SSDs in consumer devices already have high temperatures and thermal throttling, so I'm worried about how Apple's implementati…

Im curious, how often is SSD / storage speed performance really useful? I feel like for many people it's akin to gigabyte wifi in that its nice to have, but not really particularly necessary

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#183

Post by root_axis »

vadansky wrote: post #135

Sorry for being lazy, but is there a rough breakdown like "You get sonnet level for M5 and Opus for M5 pro, etc.", or is it still speculative. Or put simpler, do you get Opus level for the 256GB M5 Max?

For local LLMs with a Mac, rule of thumb is you always want an Ultra (due to memory bandwidth). Even an M1 Ultra is superior to an M6 Pro in this regard.

There are no configurations even close to running something comparable to frontier model variants, they're simply far too large, but something like full precision Qwen 35b or DeepSeek 70b at 50+ t/s is well within available configuration, and potential for plenty of room for large context sizes.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#184

Post by master_crab »

joshstrange wrote: post #7

Due 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.

I had the same view recently. For the past year I’ve been using my iPad to remote into both my MacBook Pro M1 Max and my racked Linux workstation at home using Jump and moonlight/sunshine, respectively. Never looked back

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#185

Post by enragedcacti »

jve wrote: post #123
mschuster91 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computers are never "future proof". Upgradeable components however could go a loooong stretch towards that goal. It can't be that hard to follow a common form factor for at least the housing across two or three generations to allow a reuse of everything but the main PCB.

Think it would have same memory bandwidth if the RAM was upgradeable? Would be nice if someone knowledgeable about electrical engineering and manufacturing processes could lay out some valid reasons for manufacturers to integrate RAM onto the motherboard. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49041256#49082206

It isn't integrated into the motherboard, it's integrated onto the same package as the CPU/GPU which allows for better signal integrity and higher speeds. You can get somewhat close to the same speeds while modular with tech like LPCAMM2, but there are some pretty difficult challenges to overcome to close the gap completely. As an example, the Framework Laptop 13 Pro CPUs support up to 9600MT/s (same as M5), and Micron sells LPCAMM2 modules that can run at 8533MT/s, but the 13 Pro only officially supports 7467MT/s.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#186

Post by ahknight »

mikestew wrote: post #132
mrala wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to compare the costs of a top of the line machine every decade or so. Costs were steadily decreasing until recently.

John Dvorak said many, many decades ago (80s/90s) that the computer you want will always cost $3000. That statement has been more/less true for some time periods than others, but with some wiggle room I’ve found it to be accurate enough. Care to guess the approximate price of the MBP I bought earlier this year?

My heavily-upgraded M1 Max came in slightly over that when I got it five years ago. (Still going very, very strong.)

This new Studio? Can't find a config under $5k I'd bother with. But for the MBPs that number still mostly tracks for the average Pro user. (I buy large and run it into the ground so long I mistake the ground for the computer's remains.)

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#188

Post by mikestew »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #162
mikestew wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Dvorak said many, many decades ago (80s/90s) that the computer you want will always cost $3000. That statement has been more/less true for some time periods than others, but with some wiggle room I’ve found it to be accurate enough. Care to guess the approximate price of the MBP I bought earlier this year?

I bought my refurbished M3 Max MBP with 64 GB for $3k a couple of years ago. Before Ethan I never spent more than $2k for a computer.

The “spend” and “want” number might differ, depending on one’s financial state. I know I’ve purchased plenty for less than $3K. But the one I wanted…

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#190

Post by root_axis »

rogerkirkness wrote: post #147
vadansky wrote: post #135

Sorry for being lazy, but is there a rough breakdown like "You get sonnet level for M5 and Opus for M5 pro, etc.", or is it still speculative. Or put simpler, do you get Opus level for the 256GB M5 Max?

Opus is probably ~2T parameter model, so that would probably not run on these. More like Sonnet.

Sonnet is estimated around 1T, so that is far beyond what's practical as well.
Post reply on HN