M4 Max 128GB RAM Knocks My Socks Off

[Admiral]

I splurged and got the M4 Max Mac Studio with 128GB RAM. It arrived today, and after hours of waiting to migrate away from the M2 Mac Studio, it's finally up and running. While dicking around with LM Studio and LLaMa 3.3-70b, I idly set Handbrake to doing a software AV1 encode of Avengers Endgame today, expecting to see 70% improvement performance over the same encode on the M2 Max. Instead, I am seeing about double the framerate on the encode.

100% in two years is not too shabby.

This machine is astonishing. I'm really hoping an M4 Ultra or equivalent is not released this year, because I am planning to buy a car.

 

[rebelo]

Did your M2 Mac Studio have 128GB as well? Because, really, with 128GB everything will knock your socks off

 

[JSRinUK]

I’ve been using Qwen3 235B A22B on my Mac Studio.

Having 128GB just blows my mind.

To be fair, even 24GB on my MBP does most of what I want (I did some Handbrake when I first got it and it made my old Surface Pro 6 look like it fell out of the Ark), but loading up a 95GB LLM on a domestic computer is just crazy.

 

[Admiral]

 

[Admiral]

Pro Tip: When buying a high-end Mac, it pays to look for the small savings. Apple discounts returned products 7-10% in the Refurb Store, and gives active-duty military and veterans a 10% discount which can be used in the Refurb Store. Pick it up at an Apple Store in a neighboring state which has no sales tax, and one avoids another 8-9%. It really adds up — I got the Mac Studio for about 25% less out of pocket this way.

The thousand dollars bought my daughter a nice MacBook Air.

 

[throAU]

I splurged and got the M4 Max Mac Studio with 128GB RAM. It arrived today, and after hours of waiting to migrate away from the M2 Mac Studio, it's finally up and running. While dicking around with LM Studio and LLaMa 3.3-70b, I idly set Handbrake to doing a software AV1 encode of Avengers Endgame today, expecting to see 70% improvement performance over the same encode on the M2 Max. Instead, I am seeing about double the framerate on the encode.

100% in two years is not too shabby.

This machine is astonishing. I'm really hoping an M4 Ultra or equivalent is not released this year, because I am planning to buy a car.

Yeah the first time I set my m4 max running some handbrake work I thought it had crapped out because it finished so fast. I was coming from an M1 Pro, so the step was huge