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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

#441

Post by Forgeties79 »

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…

Man I did exactly this with the PC I built last April, it was the best decision ever. I love having a dedicated space with a huge tower running everything. Two big monitors mounted to the back of the desk on arms, huge mechanical keyboard in the middle with a big ergonomic mouse pad and hand shoe mouse.

It’s a whole “thing” when I go to the computer now. And frankly, it’s made it way more fun to use. It’s kind of like enjoying the process of listening to vinyl rather than pulling up a song on Spotify

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#442

Post by aurareturn »

blints wrote: post #62
dist-epoch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 grand for 256GB memory. A NVIDIA RTX 6000, 96 GB at 1.7 TB/s, is 13 grand. This 256 GB at 1.2 TB/s Mac is extremely competitive, it will be sold out everywhere.

The relevant comparison isn't one mac studio to one RTX 6000, it's a 24 channel DDR5 system, which also has ~1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth (or more when Xeon 6 compatible 8800mt/s memory becomes widely available), vastly higher prefill due to more CPU horsepower, orders of magnitude faster networking, can hook into GPU accelerators, can be upgraded etc. A baseline 384GB system from eg Puget is ~30K vs ~12K for the 256G…

Prefill is gated by GPU compute, not CPU compute. A Epyc/Xeon CPU will never beat an M5 GPU in prefill. If you want something that can match M5 Ultra in prefill, you'd need to add beefy Nvidia GPU. However, the problem is that the GPU memory is separate from the 384GB system memory. And here lies that advantage of Apple Silicon. It's unified memory and accessible by the CPU and GPU.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#443

Post by hedora »

mswphd wrote: post #279
jmalicki wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As of a year ago, the strix halo AMD (system on chip, unified ram) was within single digit percentages of the mac, but it’s a linux box, so much better for most dev and as an llm server.

I know AMD has announced the replacement, and it will be faster, but I’m not sure when it’ll ship.

Also, you can cluster strix halo if you need more than 128GB of ram.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#444

Post by interpol_p »

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.

They used to support that. Isn’t possible to do unified memory in those configurations? If not, then I expect it’s a headache Apple does not want to deal with. For example, earlier versions of Metal have unified/discrete memory modes with different API availability and behaviour in each - what a nightmare to support and maintain and keep bugs out it would be

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#445

Post by aurareturn »

blints wrote: post #143
ricardobeat wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 3x more, plus the cost of a GPU (another 10k?). How is that value for money to get slightly better performance?

It can be more than "slightly", particularly if the model you're interested in (or will be interested in in 6 months) doesn't fit on the mac studio. You also need to account for eg storing 10TB of random checkpoints, load time when experimenting, and so on. When you start actually needing throughput these are all capability gaps in practical use, not just x% benchmark differences. If you just want to run Qwen 3.8 27B…

Doesn't make any sense since you can chain 3 M5 Ultra studios for the same price to get 768 which is 2x more than your system.

Lastly, I want to clarify that prefill on an x86 CPU is drastically slower than on an M5 Ultra GPU.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#446

Post by aurareturn »

petercooper wrote: post #52
dist-epoch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 grand for 256GB memory. A NVIDIA RTX 6000, 96 GB at 1.7 TB/s, is 13 grand. This 256 GB at 1.2 TB/s Mac is extremely competitive, it will be sold out everywhere.

How's the compute side now, I wonder? Because while the Ultras have impressive memory bandwidth for inference, processing prompts still takes a dog's age on my M3 Ultra. I heard the M5 makes some strides forward in this area, though, and the M7 in particular promises to go a lot further.

4x faster prompt processing than M3 Ultra.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#447

Post by aurareturn »

angoragoats wrote: post #49
dist-epoch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 grand for 256GB memory. A NVIDIA RTX 6000, 96 GB at 1.7 TB/s, is 13 grand. This 256 GB at 1.2 TB/s Mac is extremely competitive, it will be sold out everywhere.

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.

Mac studio wins in memory capacity, price, perf/watt and value.

RTX 6000 wins in performance, if your model can fit into the VRAM.

There are very obvious and clear advantages to a Mac Studio. It's an entire system for one and you're getting a world class CPU as well.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#448

Post by nl »

srmatto wrote: post #360
SwellJoe wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in the same ballpark as two 128GB AI machines like the Asus GX10 or DGX Spark or Strix Halo. And, it seems very likely to perform better than either of those for inference. And, 256GB brings some pretty good models into play. But, that doesn't make it a good deal. It just means the Apple tax doesn't apply when stacked up against AI machines and with memory prices being so out of whack. I'm still planning to wa…

Is there anything in the works or planned that suggests the RAMpocalypse will end anytime soon? e.g. new fabs being built, permitted, planned, etc...

Define "soon"

RAM production is completely sold out for 2027[1] which means the prices are locked in until after then.

It takes about 2 years from the time ground if broken for a new fab to be built and producing RAM.

There were some new fabs announced between February and April this year by both the Korean and Chinese manufactures, so that new capacity might start having an impact in 2028 in the most optimistic scenario.

Samsung says supply will remain tight in 2028[2], and Micron says "tight beyond 2027"

The best hope is that new (Chinese) players overbuild fab capacity and supply outstrips demand. That isn't likely, but perhaps in the late 2028-2029 timeframe could happen.

[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/351344/memory-makers-seal-2027-d...

[2] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/112966/memory-shortages-will-...

[3] https://s25.q4cdn.com/621799436/files/doc_events/2026/06/Q3-...

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#449

Post by nomel »

chainwax wrote: post #220
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'm actually coming around to realizing that I _do_ expect a desktop PC to be small. I'm finding myself only considering Mini ITX desktop cases when I think about upgrading my desktop. I only have one video card and don't have storage requirements that necessitate lots of 3.5" drives, a big nvme is all I need. We no longer need CD/DVD/floppy drives, storage has shrunk/moved to the cloud. The only thing that's really…

But then how will you fit your action figures and extra displays that go in your case?

They were obsolete a decade ago, but priced out by artificially expensive "SFF PC" cases, fans, and power supplies. PC building completely transitioned to fashionable cargo cult in the late 2010's, with the rise of twitch.

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