New Apple Mac Studio M5 Ultra: the Best Local AI Machine?
TL;DR
Apple's latest hardware release introduced two machines designed to handle local AI workloads: the Mac Studio M5 Ultra and the Mac Mini M5 Pro. In his detailed breakdown, Manolo Remiddi highlights how the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, with its 1.2 TB/s memory bandwidth, sets a new standard for memory-intensive tasks like running large language models locally.
Nauti's Take
The real progress here is 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth, enough to run large models locally without data ever leaving the machine. The risk is cost per token, since occasional inference stays far cheaper on an API and the hardware ages faster than any depreciation schedule.
This buy makes sense for teams with sensitive data or steady heavy load, not for evening experiments.
Video
Sources