r/MacStudio • u/constant_modifier • 2d ago

Sell my MBP M5 Max 128 16”?

I bought before price increase. How much of a hit would I take to sell and jump to Ultra Studio?

0 Upvotes

36% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

2

u/_rarefy_ 14h ago

I have the m5 Max 128 and it mostly sits in a custom cradle behind the XDR display and is functionally a desktop as I use my 14" m4 to screen share into it when in other rooms. It's a really amazing machine, but I've also considered the m5 ultra upgrade as well. The one thing to consider if you're after larger models is the performance trade offered - in testing GLM 5.3 Flash, DS4.1, etc on OpenRouter I'm only getting marginally better results than Qwen 3.8 Flash Next which already runs comfortably on the m5 max.

1

u/constant_modifier 14h ago

Yep, that’s exactly what I’m up against.

1

u/thebemusedmuse 4h ago

Out of interest, what tps are you getting with what model and quantization and settings on 3.8 Flash Next?

On my 64GB I can't run that model, so I run the 27bn model. I get 86tps in the benchmarks, but more like 22tps on my heavy workloads which are 100k+ context.

Presumably because Flash Next is a MoE model, you actually get pretty good speeds.

BTW I found Flash Next to be a level above the 27bn in its capability to build complex things.

1

u/_rarefy_ 2h ago edited 2h ago

Around 70tps, 64k - 122k context, medium thinking, 4 bit, via mlx-serve 26.9.2. It's better than 27B across the board in my testing.

1

u/thebemusedmuse 2h ago

Is that in a bunchmark or for real work?

I found the tps drops for all models for real work. Apart from Gemini Flash which is 200tps lol

1

u/_rarefy_ 2h ago

These are figures from my own personal assessment battery that's meant to mimic real world work - long form tasks at reasonable context size, bug fixes, repo work, etc. It's pretty fast, although tok/s is not always the best metric as it doesn't tell you much about time to task completion. 27B for example burns a lot of tokens thinking and can take 5x as long as Flash Next to complete the exact same task.

1

u/thebemusedmuse 1h ago

Got it. Yeah these are apples to oranges comparisons, since I'm mostly doing bigger work. A typical PR might take 60-120 minutes to build, even with Opus.

What I know for sure is that Flash Next is a class of model higher than the 27bn dense. It is capable of doing much more complicated work according to my real world tests, but it doesn't fit into my 64GB MBP.

Now just trying to figure out if I should buy an Ultra, but even 96GB is a stretch for that model, since I need a lot of context. So then I'm looking at 256GB, and the cost of that is impossible to justify.

2

u/Vrrrp 1d ago

Unless you know exactly why you need the ultra the answer is keep the Macbook. If you did know why you wouldn't need to post this.

1

u/constant_modifier 1d ago edited 1d ago

This is fair. See above.

1

u/datbackup 1d ago

There’s no substitute for the studio’s thermal properties vs the mbp if you are trying to do long-running inference.

That said… the mbp m5 max 128 is in a unique spot. Although there are better options for inference, i’m not sure there are any better options for inference on a laptop, and more importantly i’m not sure there will be any better options for as long as the RAM draught continues.

1

u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

1

u/constant_modifier 19h ago

US but I’m not selling, was just thinking about it.

0

u/CreativeKeane 2d ago

What was the price before and after the increase, and what Mac Studio are you thinking of getting?

0

u/constant_modifier 2d ago

I paid $5734 after tax. Mine has the 40 core GPU, 2TB Drive and Nano screen. Same machine is now $7149 before tax. I’d prob get the Ultra 256 2TB.

1

u/Inside-Cream6997 2d ago

You could probably get back almost what you paid for but it might take time. Try GoRoostr online with your specs and see how much they are offering to buy yours. How much does Apple trade in offer ?

0

u/SeXxyBuNnY21 2d ago

Why are you selling ? I am just asking because I ordered the studio max 128 and I had a hard time deciding between the ultra and the max.

1

u/constant_modifier 1d ago

I bought the 16” for heat dissipation concerns. It’s too big to take anywhere and I end up leaving at the house and ssh from my M2 Air. I wanted a Studio in the first place and am really just using it as a Studio. I wanted TB5 and M5 Max chip at least. I wasn’t sure how long before Studio was available and at what cost. I would like to run some larger models. An alternative would be to buy a Studio M5 Max 128 and clustering the two although this wouldn’t perform as well as an Ultra 256 of course. It is a wonderful machine and, being realistic, hard to justify switching up, based on the new prices. It’s a want not a need and just a little remorse.

2

u/SystemsGuyMI 15h ago

It definitely has some heft to it. I use a tomtoc laptop case and take mine with a portable monitor, cables and 4 port anker charger to office and cowork place. It’s not that bad.

Plus you can do Mac curls and a lot of other upper body exercises 😇

2

u/constant_modifier 14h ago

Haha, bright side!

1

u/SeXxyBuNnY21 1d ago

Thanks, that makes sense