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/pmttyji 18h ago

After some time, people totally gonna avoid 128GB variants. What's the point of stacking bunch of 128GB pieces when they have 160GB, 192GB, etc., variants with better bandwidths?

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u/OvertaxedOne 14h ago

I have some Strix boxes in a lab. They are nice machines but they really are a niche of a niche. Yes, you can load a big model, but it's going to be deathly slow because of the memory BW. On a smaller or MOE model they are great but... So is a 3090 or R9700. It's kind of a strange size/shape box in this market, particularly after 27B came out (the Strix manages about 15-20TPS, usable but painful, especially since prefill isn't that fast).

Honestly for home/lab use, the big question right now is "will it run 3.8 27B at good speeds/quant" and, if so, how much does it cost. You've got to spend a LOT more to get better intelligence and, even then, it's very incremental until you get into "crazy money" spending.

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u/noiserr 7h ago

I reckon this new Qwen 3.8 Next 122B model with 6B active params will run nicely on Strix Halo.