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Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#131

Post by storus »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #124
storus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge local thinking LLMs to solve math and for general assistant-style tasks. Models like Kimi-2.5-Q3, DeepSeek-XX-Q4/Q5, Qwen-3.5-Q8, MiniMax-m2.5-Q8 etc. that bring me to Claude4/GPT5 territory without any cloud. For coding I have another machine with 3x RTX Pro 6000 (mostly Qwen subvariants) and for image/video/audio generation I have 2x DGX Sparks from ASUS.

We must be twins, i've got the same three working in a cluster. I was really excited to see where the GB300 Desktops end up, with 768gb ram but now that data is leaking / popping up (dell appears to only be 496gb), we may be in the 60-100k range and that's well out of my comfort zone. If Apple came out with a 768gb Studio at 15k i'd bite in a heart beat. https://www.dell.com/en-us/lp/dell-pro-max-nvidia-ai-dev

Yeah, I didn't want to spend more than 50k for local inference stack. I can amortize it in my taxes so it's not a big deal but beyond it would start eating into my other allocations. I might still get M5 Ultra if it pops up and benchmarks look good, possibly selling M3 Ultra.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#132

Post by zozbot234 »

jsheard wrote: post #29
mkl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the RAM bandwidth that's the advantage, 300GB/s for M5 Pro. RAM in slots is way slower, ~50GB/s.

But for ML workloads the comparison isn't between slotted CPU RAM and Apple's unified RAM, it's between Apple's unified RAM and dedicated GPU VRAM, which can more than double even the M3 Ultras bandwidth at up to 1.8TB/sec. Apple Silicon makes a unique set of trade-offs that shine in certain areas but they are still trade-offs nonetheless, so it really depends on what exactly you're doing with the hardware.

Dedicated GPU VRAM is much scarcer than the unified RAM you get on Mac platforms. This is a big deal for SOTA LLMs that combine high memory footprint with a need for high memory bandwidth in order to get acceptable performance.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#134

Post by [deleted] »

zozbot234 wrote: post #132
jsheard wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for ML workloads the comparison isn't between slotted CPU RAM and Apple's unified RAM, it's between Apple's unified RAM and dedicated GPU VRAM, which can more than double even the M3 Ultras bandwidth at up to 1.8TB/sec. Apple Silicon makes a unique set of trade-offs that shine in certain areas but they are still trade-offs nonetheless, so it really depends on what exactly you're doing with the hardware.

Dedicated GPU VRAM is much scarcer than the unified RAM you get on Mac platforms. This is a big deal for SOTA LLMs that combine high memory footprint with a need for high memory bandwidth in order to get acceptable performance.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#135

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

kube-system wrote: post #129
copperx wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the deal with the Mac Mini and Openclaw? a vps is a better alternative. is it because iMessage?

iMessage… and safari. Browsing the web from a headless vps has hurdles.

> safari. Browsing the web from a headless vps has hurdles

Hooking things up to puppeteer maybe?

You can use pupeteer to then use the chromium control remote (debug?) option iirc which uses websockets underneath the hood

Then you can connect this from your pc or theoretically any Control server. Surprised to not hear much work on that front now that you mention it.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#136

Post by GeekyBear »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #111
GeekyBear wrote: post #109

The rumor from Gurman is that the M5 Ultra Mac Studio ships in the first half of this year. This may just be a sign that the M5 Ultra Mac Studio is shipping sooner rather than later, as it's common for Apple to push out ship dates for soon to be replaced products. We do have leaked benchmarks showing that the M5 Max outperforms the M3 Ultra currently shipping in the Mac Studio, so buying an M3 Ultra Studio right now…

Slightly off-topic side remark: Every mathematician and computer scientist should feel deeply confused that the M... Ultra is more powerful than the M... Max. Why? Because if something is the maximum , there doesn't exist anything larger/better. :-)

They should use something simple, like AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395?

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#137

Post by [deleted] »

zozbot234 wrote: post #132
jsheard wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for ML workloads the comparison isn't between slotted CPU RAM and Apple's unified RAM, it's between Apple's unified RAM and dedicated GPU VRAM, which can more than double even the M3 Ultras bandwidth at up to 1.8TB/sec. Apple Silicon makes a unique set of trade-offs that shine in certain areas but they are still trade-offs nonetheless, so it really depends on what exactly you're doing with the hardware.

Dedicated GPU VRAM is much scarcer than the unified RAM you get on Mac platforms. This is a big deal for SOTA LLMs that combine high memory footprint with a need for high memory bandwidth in order to get acceptable performance.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#138

Post by __patchbit__ »

storus wrote: post #81
appreciatorBus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Like hot cakes” is relative. > The 512GB Mac Studio was not a mass-market machine—adding that much RAM also required springing for the most expensive M3 Ultra model, which brought the system’s price to a whopping $9,499. Number of people willing the number of people willing to spend $10,000 on a computer is pretty tiny. Maybe they are common enough in HN circles, but I doubt any one at Apple is losing sleep over the…

A retailer told me they sold more 512GB RAM MacStudios than any other type. N=1 I know but still...

There is a $6 thousand value add service to configure your Mac Mini with AI and have that accessible over iMessage.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#139

Post by root_axis »

kmfrk wrote: post #108
marcuskaz wrote: post #89

Inventory is tight too, if you look at delivery/shipping times for Mac Studio and Mac Mini, I'm seeing April/May

A lot of people also got into buying Macs for OpenClaw, so demand is probably up as well.

I am not convinced there are that many people actually buying macs for OpenClaw.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#140

Post by j45 »

More likely that the M5 Max Studio is coming out. the M5 Max Macbook Pros just came out.

Also the 512 GB ssd version has a slower SSD than anything 1 TB and up. The new SSDs on the M5 I believe are much faster and what's coming likely will receive that.

There's no doubt there's a ram shortage, and price increases, and the biggest companies in the world lock in their pricing well in advance, and the remaining leftovers are where the consumers experience shortages.

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