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New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

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Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#271

Post by mikepurvis »

meric_ wrote: post #182
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

Unrelated to disk, I've definitely been thinking about this more on the network side recently. I upgraded to 1.4/900 home fibre a while back and then got a modern Unifi UCG/U6 wifi setup, and while I do get 1.4GB down from my hardwired workstation in an explicit speed test I have yet to get anything close to that on real-world workflows. Torrents, container-pulls, backups, all of it seem to cap out around 20-50 MB/s.

So while have having this massive almost-symmetric fibre pipe is cool on paper, I haven't felt a huge need to install 2.5G gear all over the house.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#272

Post by fleroviumna »

meric_ wrote: post #182
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

[dead]

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#273

Post by setgree »

osmukka wrote: post #179

Reading this press release was almost physically painful, because of how much Apple loves to use the phrase "up to". In total it appears 46 times.

I enjoyed "up to an 80-core GPU, and a staggering 512GB of unified memory"

Staggering?? I can count on no hands the number of times that a fact or figure has caused me to stagger.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#274

Post by matja »

geraneum wrote: post #153
matja wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's higher bandwidth than any dual-channel DDR5 desktop machine, but Apple never quote the memory latency, so hard to compare otherwise.

Would that be a difficult comparison to do fairly sine one is SoC and the other isn’t?

I meant that it's a difficult comparison between platforms without having all the details like memory latency, how the memory controller load increases latency (can increase by 4x on some platforms), cache latency, TLB entries, etc.

Extremely high bandwidth is great for copying data, but not as relevant for walking chains of pointers, where latency/cache/TLB entries are more important.

So just saying "high bandwidth == better" is true when other variables are the same, but they rarely are, especially in comparison to x86-64 offerings.

All of these are independent that it is a SoC with on-package DRAM.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#275

Post by HumblyTossed »

seviu wrote: post #261
freehorse wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the prices of course, where they use “starting at 5,499$” instead of “up to 18,299$” to indicate user options.

The cleaning cloth went down in price about 50% There is some consolation there

Only because it doesn't contain RAM.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#276

Post by mgfist »

setgree wrote: post #273
osmukka wrote: post #179

Reading this press release was almost physically painful, because of how much Apple loves to use the phrase "up to". In total it appears 46 times.

I enjoyed "up to an 80-core GPU, and a staggering 512GB of unified memory" Staggering?? I can count on no hands the number of times that a fact or figure has caused me to stagger.

Idk 512GB of (essentially) ram is pretty damn insane for a consumer machine

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#277

Post by HumblyTossed »

setgree wrote: post #273
osmukka wrote: post #179

Reading this press release was almost physically painful, because of how much Apple loves to use the phrase "up to". In total it appears 46 times.

I enjoyed "up to an 80-core GPU, and a staggering 512GB of unified memory" Staggering?? I can count on no hands the number of times that a fact or figure has caused me to stagger.

Yes, but you've surely met people who giggled when they read that.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#279

Post by mswphd »

jmalicki wrote: post #253
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.

Why not a non-mac cheaper desktop/workstation and a Mac laptop for use? E.g. what most major tech companies have - a laptop that is for VSCode via ssh/web browsing, and a beefy Linux dev box you ssh into for everything else? It's way cheaper, and what I use at home too - a lot cheaper than a Mac studio for everything, especially with RAM and storage.

if you do want to do local LLM stuff, mac studio is significantly better than most linux dev boxes.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#280

Post by anentropic »

msdz wrote: post #200
matt-p wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option is a 'maxed out' mini e.g M5 Pro/64GB. Mini is super easy to travel with if you know there'll be a 'dock' at the far end e.g office home or whatever.

So I can somewhat speak to this, as I actually did this for a while c. 2021 and 2022. The issue (apart from my Mac mini still having the old, bigger form factor back then) is that this requires a full shutdown (obviously), and that is more friction than opening a closed laptop lid. It just takes a moment for every app and background service etc. to settle back in after, and depending on how your brain works, you migh…

I did this for a few years, going further back in time.

The shutdown thing didn't bother me, and in fact the Mini was lighter than a Macbook Air at the time. So all in all it was pretty convenient.

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