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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

#331

Post by JohnBooty »

duxup wrote: post #322
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’ve wanted the idea of a home server or even home “mainframe” and some terminals for me and family forever but the idea never takes off….

Same. For me, it’s one of those “solutions in search of a problem.”

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#332

Post by dannyw »

doctoboggan wrote: post #202

> Apple’s most powerful Mac raises the bar for local AI Wow, "Local AI" mentioned in the subheading above the fold - it's really awesome to see Apple leaning into this use case and I think it will definitely pay off for them going forward. Fingers crossed Apple is able to put some engineering effort towards shipping with one of the frontier open weight models included and optimized exactly for the machine.

The product marketing managers write for the target audience; of course they know lots of people buying these are the local LLM crowd.

I actually wouldn't want a serious model shipping 'on disk'. Models release so often, it's going to get outdated quickly. LMStudio is trivial to set up.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#333

Post by JohnBooty »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #40
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've been holding out, because I think my next purchase will be a Studio with an Ultra Chip in it. I'm wanting it to be a "forever" server, so I'm holding out while I can.

If running LLMs locally matters, it’s hard to imagine a “forever machine” existing in anything less than 5-10 years, probably more. This stuff is just evolving so rapidly. Buying a “forever machine” today might be like buying a “forever GPU” in 2003.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#334

Post by dannyw »

root_axis wrote: post #183
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…

256GB is enough for DSv4 Flash, expect maybe ~30tg/s, and a lot better profile.

I'm using Flash heavily, and I would describe it as nearly as intelligent as Sonnet-class in agentic coding, but more usable. Less world knowledge of course, and definitely a bit less intelligent; but not _that_ much.

On usability: Takes less handholding, less likely to make unsolicited refactors or whatever, and the writing style is readable.

It's not great at super-long-horizon goals as the Claude 5 models are; but if you have a good harness, you can get around that.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#336

Post by rxyz »

dakolli wrote: post #290
GodelNumbering wrote: post #150

1.2 TB/s bandwidth of M5 Ultra comes from two dies of M5 Max (each 614 GB/s) connected together using 4.4 TB/s inter-die fabric. For a non-quantized Deepseek V4 flash on an ultra, I would estimate about 1000+ tokens per second prefill and 50+ tokens per second on generation. This is actually quite usable and near parity to cloud. They mention "adds the GPU Neural Accelerators." which, if exploitable for LLM loads, wo…

How much would is the cost for that machine though, I'm pretty sure I could just buy tokens from a provider and never run out of money for 10 years, and get far better quality output because inference is being served by professionals on far better hardware and this machine would be obsolete long before that as well. Hosting local seems like a possibly the dumbest thing you could possibly do from an economics perspect…

You can’t run multiple workers 24/7 for 100 bucks a month

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#337

Post by sowrabh »

How does this compare to NVIDIA DGX Spark? From what I see, if the performance is better than 2x DGX Spark, this could boost and in a way reshape Local AI in a significant way (along with all the OSS models wave that's happening) - look forward to that!

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#338

Post by rafaelmn »

bilsbie wrote: post #311
rafaelmn wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not use Neo, Air with 24 GB ram should be your minimum because you will want to do some work locally even when you're running a VPN/SSH thin client setup. I'm currently SSH-ing into my workstation from my M4 Air with 24 gb ram and it's ideal for this flow. Slack/editors/clients/browsers/etc. easily gobble up over 16 GB. I have no more dev tools/compilers/source on my client machines, everything is dockered up…

Can that run qwen? Also can you explain what you meant by the downside ?

If I was going to run LLMs locally I would definitely go for a pro.

I meant the only downside of not using a pro for my use-case is that I don't have a HDMI port on device with high refresh rate. I have a decent dock that can give me 4k/60hz HDMI but not 120hz refresh for macs (it works on windows). It's a minor thing but having 120hz is nice when I'm docked at home.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#339

Post by ModernMech »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #81
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've been thinking about this a fair bit recently. We make a lot of price/performance compromises for having an attached screen and keyboard on our computer. That was what got me started. Then I remembered the days of having to go to a special corner of the house to use a computer, vs now when I have a computer with me all the time. In my bag, on the sofa, on the train. Hell, I'm writing this on the work MBP while wa…

[dead]

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#340

Post by pantulis »

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.

YMMV, but when I got my iPad I realized that my "mobile" needs were only contempt consumption and my MBP was used as a desktop computer connected to a 32'' monitor. So every time I renewed my laptop the expensive screen went with it, and I had to pay for another one that I would be using as a second screen!

Thus, my current workhorse is a Studio.

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