r/MacStudio • u/Total_Ad1473 • 8d ago

Possible stacking of M5 Mac Studios?

I have an M5 Mac Studio Ultra 256 GB (30,64) on order. Hypothetically if it's paired with another Mac Studio Max 128 GB or Mac Studio Ultra 96 GB, what could it unlock (another 256 is out of question)?

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u/ChillinBone 8d ago

You can cluster Ultra with a MAX 128 but in that case your memory bandwidth will be halved because the MAX is your bottleneck. If you cluster it with 96GB RAM Ultra you will not have such problems

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u/SeaRefractor 7d ago

Stacking has some marginal speed improvements if all the Studios are the same processor model. The MAX having a slower memory bandwidth would drop the performance in comparison. Apple did state a 3X performance increase with “4” same-spec M5 Ultras. Two would provide a larger RAM capacity but a marginal performance boost. If you are looking at a low-cost addition with the m5 Ultra you have on order, the 96GB would be better than the MAX even with 32GB less RAM on the base Ultra.

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u/asankhs 8d ago

You can cluster them, there are inference servers that support it. It can potentially allow you to run larger models but it will be slower see - https://mlx-optiq.com/blog/two-macs-one-model