Is upgrading M4 to M5 worth it for AI?

[Gregintosh]

Was wondering how many people here are experimenting with local AI LLM models and AI Agents and such.

I saw that they claimed AI processing is up to 4x faster on the M5 chip than the M4. I wonder how it is in real world usage, and how much of an impact it makes on the overall experience of using these agents.

I am considering moving from my M4 Air to an M5. My main motivation is that I made a mistake in getting 512GB when in reality I need a lot more space for my needs, so was considering going with 2TB this time.

But knowing how much better the AI experience can also help me justify the move. Otherwise, might just wait until next year and suffer a bit this year with the lower space.

 

[conmee]

AI processing seems to be where M5 provides the biggest boost over M4 with the neural accelerators included in each GPU core. You mention local LLMs, from what I’ve read the biggest limiting factor is memory. Depending on what you are planning to do and your budget, an M5 Pro or Max with 64GB-128GB is the way to go for serious local AI/LLM work (although this depends on the kind of models you work with and what you want to do, I’d say 32GB memory is the bare minimum to do useful things with LLMs, but would be great to hear other MacRumor opinions on this). I think if you’re just going from an M4 Air to an M5 Air then the AI performance with smaller core count of a base M5 and limited memory shouldn’t really be a deciding factor. The M5 will process local inferencing better than M4 (up to 4X according to Apple) and will be good for accelerating AI features built into Adobe and other apps, but you’ll need a beefier Mac than an Air if you want to get into serious work/research on your local machine. This is just my two cents. Looking forward to hearing the experts’ responses.

 

[boomspot]

Better off keeping hardware you have and using paid LLM from one of the big providers. A single Mac will never keep up or evolve with the rapidly changing landscape. Trust me I wish it could.