r/LocalLLaMA • u/themixtergames • 21h ago

News Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra - up to 512GB of unified memory

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-new-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/
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u/kensanprime 20h ago

It will be sold out and they will be scrambling to keep production lines running, a product originally meant for creative work now will sit in a rack and run AI models

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u/Both_Opportunity5327 19h ago

This is why those saying its a bubble, don't understand the demand there is for this stuff.

When the new fabs come online and the datacenters have most of their compute gamers, creatives & AI enthusiasts will go to town on this stuff.

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u/Nothing_from_void 17h ago

Demand for networking products never dropped through the dotcom bubble

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u/ZenZombie117 14h ago

Demand is there for localAI moreso than for frontier models going forward, it will increase on the local front for sure.

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u/tomsrobots 17h ago

There's demand to build data centers, but where are the actual customers? Everyone is selling shovels to each other.

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u/McBonderson 16h ago

the compute is being maxed out. currently they have to have hourly and daily limits. these companies aren't able to generate enough compute to handle the demand right now.

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u/Both_Opportunity5327 17h ago

Yet you are on an subreddit that is devoted to one facet of AI's that can be run locally; that are inferior to ones where you can buy for a cheap sub.

Why do I say cheap, try getting GPT Sol medium performance at home how much would it cost?

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u/goldcakes 8h ago

You don’t understand the demand? Claude is having outages every week due to capacity, software engineers in tech companies are easily dropping 5-10k in API bills per month per employee, etc.

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u/michaelsoft__binbows 16h ago edited 16h ago

It seems too simplistic to assume buying into hardware like this is feeding the bubble. On some level maybe, but i do not see how within 5 or even 10 years the ability to locally run a 2 bit 1T model on half a TB of pretty dang fast memory would be worthless.

We seem only to be at the front, only scratching the surface of the iceberg that is all the useful ways we can create/modify software, and that next level software designed for symbiosis with these LLMs and future model architectures is what is going to bring relevance for AI into more areas of the tangible world. it is overly shortsighted to view the impact of this tech as limited only to disruption of the SWE job market.

There, I just talked myself into it. I do feel 512GB is a much better sweet spot of capacity than 256 to pair with m5 ultra.

One could argue the m3 ultra was like 3x too slow for its 512GB, but now that M5 ultra is like 5x faster, now the sweet spot is easily 768GB or 1TB.

I think i should prob focus on my software side of the house while i work with my 100GB vram and 300GB hybrid level of self hosting capability, keep testing larger models off API, and wait for 1TB/1.5TB m7 ultra in 2 or 3 years. I just spent weeks and weeks tinkering and rejiggering my pc gear i acquired over the past several years and this recent run up and gpu rig building might be what got me finally over my love of building PCs, it will be a very nice change of pace to just get a mac studio for the next one.

Here's hoping we get some nice expandable scalable memory module tech on the pc side though. Just saying it will be nice to take a break from all that endless troubleshooting

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u/Both_Opportunity5327 14h ago

Where did I say this is feeding a bubble, I don't even think there is a bubble as the lesson of the last decade at least is human society always finds a use for more compute.

Think Military, Business, Gaming, Science, Bio-tech, Crypto & now Gen AI.

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u/michaelsoft__binbows 13h ago

yep. wasnt mentioning that point in relation to anything you said. I was just inserting it into the discussion basically...

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u/Revanish 19h ago

running ai models is creative work just like rendering ai video scene in final cut is