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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

#421

Post by angoragoats »

F7F7F7 wrote: post #69
angoragoats wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the RTX 6000 will run circles around the Mac studio in just about every way. Memory bandwidth is literally the only spec where Apple is competitive, and while high memory bandwidth is necessary for LLMs to perform well, many people strangely don't understand that memory bandwidth alone is not sufficient.

It better because you’ll need a few of them to run some larger models (I’ll be just as vague citing which models).

I was not speaking about specific models so I didn’t feel the need to cite any. Not sure why the backhanded insult was necessary. You need multiple Mac Studios to run the largest models as well, so neither is a one-size-fits-all device.

If you can show me a model for which a Mac is faster than the RTX 6000 then I’ll be happy to update or retract my statement.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#422

Post by emp_ »

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 have exactly this setup and use a Macbook Air with Tailscale to just connect via High Performance Screen Sharing both at home and on the go (when not sitting at my desk, I move around a lot around the house after 3pm or so while I keep my workflow identical)

HPSS works well via 5G, and Tailscale is incredible for the setup as much as the hardware.

Edit: I ended up getting a 15" M5 Air but honestly trying it on a 13" M4 Air was actually superior because when all you care is mobility (since the Studio does the heavy work) its nice just going around with almost no weight / bulk.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#423

Post by abustamam »

loehnsberg wrote: post #404
AshleyGrant wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a definite mental aspect for most WFH folks to having a space that is dedicated to work. I'm not unique in saying this, but the way I put it is "If you work from anywhere in your house, then you're always at work." And that, from mental load standpoint, is not healthy for most folks.

On some days I wor from home but need to be present and the sun is out. So I take my laptop outside and work from there. I cannot do this with a desktop. Wouldn‘t the workaholic just stay inside and miss out?

Sometimes I'll just pop into a meeting from my phone and walk around. That said , I do have a laptop but only because I go to the office every so often . Otherwise, I work exclusively from my home office because that's where my home desktop computer is and I control everything on my work computer from there.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#424

Post by LPisGood »

dannyw wrote: post #332
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.

Now imagine a model shipped in silicon that gives 5,000 tokens per second at Opus 4.8 quality

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#425

Post by jwrallie »

rafaelmn wrote: post #231
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 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…

It heavily depends on your workflow and how many (electron) programs you need to run simultaneously. I found that if I’m mindful of closing things I’m not actually using, and let macOS do its swap magic, the Neo will just work.

I’m also the kind of person who close tabs and I like to work on one task at a time.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#426

Post by linguae »

drnick1 wrote: post #204

Why doesn't Apple make a tower PC with a standard ATX motherboard, power supply, extension cards, etc, like in the old days? That's immensely more upgradable, easier to cool, and I don't believe most people expect their desktops PCs to be tiny.

I'd love for Apple to bring back the Mac Pro, but Apple hasn't had an affordable Mac Pro tower since the 2012 model. Apple got rid of the tower in 2013 in favor of the "trash can" model. When the trash can languished for years without updates due to limitations with its design, Apple brought back the tower Mac Pro in 2019, but at a dramatically higher entry MSRP, which priced out many users of tower and trash can Mac Pros (I have a "trash can" and was very disappointed by the 2019 Mac Pro's entry MSRP). The introduction of the Mac Studio revealed a large price gap between similarly-specified Mac Studio and Mac Pro models. Given the lack of expandable RAM in Apple Silicon Mac Pro models, and also given the lack of support for NVIDIA GPUs in macOS, there weren't a lot of customers for Apple Silicon Mac Pros when the Mac Studio was available at a lower price, and thus the Mac Pro got discontinued.

In many ways, the Mac Studio is the spiritual successor to the trash can Mac Pro. Apple Silicon's architecture solved the thermal problems that limited the trash can Mac Pro.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#427

Post by sroussey »

willtemperley wrote: post #137
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.

> I am in Europe, and the Mac Studio M5 Ultra GPU 64 cores with 96GB RAM is up to 6.649,00 €. Ouch. It would be significantly cheaper to fly to a tariff-free country and buy there.

Technically, California and other state have laws that say you must report this purchase and pay the tax the moment it enters the state.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#428

Post by killingtime74 »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #305
dakolli wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ok sure. But this machine you can haul in an Ice Road Truck to the North Pole and do inference there in an off grid shack. Good luck talking to cloud AI there.

Wow even the elves will get replaced by AI

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#430

Post by hebetude »

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.

M4 Max Studio + Macbook Air. I've been running this for several years. Mac is a really poor server environment and none of the apple ecosystem makes up for it. So, I still prefer my linux server, but the M4 Max is much more suited for inference tasks so here it is. I wouldn't say it's much better than a MBP except the sustained throughput is much higher and the fan noise is barely noticeable. I'd get a linux equivalent if there was one.
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