New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra • Hacker News Board

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#21

Post by nine_k » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

meerita wrote: post #2

Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 (U.S.) and $2,299 (U.S.) for education. Additional configure-to-order options are available at apple.com/mac-studio. Mac Studio with M5 Ultra starts at $5,499 (U.S.) and $5,099 (U.S.). I am in Europe, and the Mac Studio M5 Ultra GPU 64 cores with 96GB RAM is up to 6.649,00 €. Ouch.

To put this into a perspective, Google helpfully reminds:

> A fully configured IBM Personal Computer AT (Model 5170) with expanded memory and storage cost around $5,795 to $6,000 at its launch in August 1984, which equals roughly $18,600 to $19,300 in 2026 USD.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#22

Post by intrasight » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

It seems super reasonably priced to me. It's only twice as expensive as my first Mac which only had 128K of memory.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#23

Post by lynndotpy » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

tarr11 wrote: post #8

ricardobayes wrote: post #5

512GB unified RAM is going to be really good for running local LLMs.

What is unified ram? RAM and VRAM as one thing?

Yep, exactly. It's just one shared pool of RAM with zero-copies necessary.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#24

Post by scosman » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

egonschiele wrote: post #6

> M6 supports up to 32GB of unified memory to multitask across demanding apps and run LLMs on device for secure and private agentic tasks. It also provides up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — a 10 percent increase over M5 and a 2.5x increase over M1. Isn't 170GB/s slow for bandwidth?

It's fast by computer standards and excellent for entry level chip. The Pro/Max/Ultra chips are always faster.

Compared to something like VRAM it's slow.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#25

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

tarr11 wrote: post #8

ricardobayes wrote: post #5

512GB unified RAM is going to be really good for running local LLMs.

What is unified ram? RAM and VRAM as one thing?

[deleted]

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#26

Post by mkesper » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

egonschiele wrote: post #6

> M6 supports up to 32GB of unified memory to multitask across demanding apps and run LLMs on device for secure and private agentic tasks. It also provides up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — a 10 percent increase over M5 and a 2.5x increase over M1. Isn't 170GB/s slow for bandwidth?

For max memory bandwidth you need to buy the Ultra versions (M5 Ultra: 1,2TB/s, this gets comparable to real GPUs regarding the memory bandwidth).

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#27

Post by kamranjon » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #20

egonschiele wrote: post #6

> M6 supports up to 32GB of unified memory to multitask across demanding apps and run LLMs on device for secure and private agentic tasks. It also provides up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — a 10 percent increase over M5 and a 2.5x increase over M1. Isn't 170GB/s slow for bandwidth?

Kinda. Strix Halo does 256GB/s of memory bandwidth, and is significantly slower than an M5 Max (614GB/s). Feels like intentional market segmentation?

You can get the m5 pro in the Mac mini with 307GB/s at 64gb of memory it’s $2899

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#28

Post by appplication » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

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 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.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#29

Post by AbsurdCensor » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

tarr11 wrote: post #8

ricardobayes wrote: post #5

512GB unified RAM is going to be really good for running local LLMs.

What is unified ram? RAM and VRAM as one thing?

Big ole pool of very fast ram that can be accessed by the CPU and GPU. Lets you run larger models. AMD does the same thing with Strix Halo. I have a 128gb machine at home, and have had difficulties running 120b models, but 70b and below run pretty well.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#30

Post by alberth » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

It looks like speculation that Apple would raise the base chip’s maximum RAM from 32GB to 48GB was wrong.

Apple also launched the base M6 today with a 32GB RAM limit, suggesting 512GB may remain the maximum for Ultra chips for some time. Since these Ultra chips combine 16 base chips:

32GB × 16 = 512GB