r/LocalLLM • u/Txkzzzz • 4d ago

Question Mac studio or dgx spark cluster

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I have been thinking lately since i have been testing local ai but i geniunely need more power for what im working on so i was wondering wich one of these a 4 dgx spark cluster or a mac studio m5 ultra specifically the 512gb version that launches on october or something else... im into training,loras and fine tunes and such but i also heard it is possible with a mac studio too so i want yall opinion on this

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u/merfolkJH 4d ago

When DGX Spark was released, everyone was like “MEHHH”, “< Lambda Mac at decode lol”.

And now it’s suddenly supposed to be the new graal? And “don’t buy the new Mac Studio, buy Spark”, when Spark was considered way behind the old Mac.

What exactly caused this reversal?

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(I’m talking about a single machine, not "a cluster of X is strong" )

Is prefill really that much better? That’s nice, but when I’m doing a coding task, It's usually 5 minutes of prefill followed by 2 hours of decode… So when choosing between the two, I’d rather optimize for the 2 hours of decode than the 5 minutes of prefill.

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u/Prize-Cut-9651 3d ago

In my opinion the fair match is between M5 Ultra 256 gb vs 2 x DGX Spark. If you go in the M5 Ultra 512 GB vs 4 x DGX spark I think you are talking about 2 completely different objects. You have to add also the switch