361–370 of 1001 posts
> the new iMac is up to 1.7x faster than iMac with M1 Now 4 generations in, they are still comparing performance to M1. I get that 15-20% improvements aren't too exciting but it feels old.
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Or separate concerns and shell out on a Studio display with the-mac-you-like on usb-c
Or buy a real computer, plug in an Nvidia GPU, and save your DRAM for compute while using your VRAM for inference.
Mac hardware offers up to 128 GB shared RAM.
As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128. I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.
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> As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. To be fair, I don't think people mucking around with large LLMs is the primary target market for the iMacs. The sort of people who muck around with LLMs almost certainly already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. And so are more likely to pick up a Mac Studio which will no doubt be com…
> And so are more likely to pick up a Mac Studio which Although price-conscious LLM muckers are most likely to pick any Apple-hardware. You can easily build rigs that are twice as powerful for half the price, assuming we compare desktops.
As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128. I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.
When I first scanned your sentence I assumed you were gonna write that 32 GB is now the minimum, not the maximum.
I love the innovation Apple has brought with their investment in ARM. That said, I can't imagine buying a computer in the 21st century that can't be opened and upgraded, especially with a price premium attached. I just don't get it. I am in no way trying to be combative, but I'd love to hear a counterpoint that makes sense for these machines.
I bought an M2 iMac for my parents. It’ll last at least five years for them - likely closer to 10. At that point, I’m happy to recycle or donate it and get them a new iMac - likely with some major updates (form factor? Display? Etc?) that wouldn’t get with a RAM / CPU upgrade. Spending ~$150-$300/year for them to have an easy to use & fast computer feels very worth it for me. All that said - I would love for the mach…
A few years later the m2pro/max's came out (i think technically in 14"). I picked one up and just handed my m1 down to family. Huge upgrade over their old intel air that had already lasted them like 10 years.
My main bitch is the soldered in storage. It's a shitty optimization that has to punish apple as much as it punishes users. To have a machine that I can't just go buy a harddrive and slot in when i want more storage or when the drive fails is a total fucking nightmare.
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I will never purchase the Studio Display on principle. It's an idiot product.
For what its worth, I am extremely satisfied with my Studio Display. The 5K resolution makes 2x pixel perfect scaling look great, built in webcam which fantatic for meetings, good speakers, and charges the MacBook Pro with the same cable, and acts as an USB-C hub.
It has a few upsides that don't get written about often, compared to other monitors:
- Apple is extremely picky about panel QC, making things like dead pixels and patchy backlights much less common
- Its design practically eliminates the backlight bleed that's common with other monitors due to variances in bezel/panel fastener tightness
- No coil whine (surprisingly common even in other high end monitors)
- Some of the best glossy antiglare treatment I've seen, without the "gritty" coating that can cause a "sparkle" effect that's common on Dell monitors
- It wakes up and displays a picture almost instantly
It's not perfect and I'd prefer better specs for the money, but it's not a bad monitor. I've tested models that are more expensive than the Studio Display that fail to check some of these boxes.
As someone who mucks around with running LLMs and other large models on my computer the 32GB maximum RAM is a show-stopper for me. I'm on a M2 with 64GB at the moment and I'm already regretting not going for 96 or even 128. I want to be able to run a large model AND other apps at the same time.