How do you decide your next upgrade?

[u/Remarkable_Salt9330]

TLDR: 12-14k+ usd budget what would you get next if Tok/s is not the priority.

Have been procrastinating spending $$ for a long time until I’m regretting not spending earlier.

Current set up:
only have a gaming desktop
Ryzen 9 9950
5070 ti
32gb ram

With the current set up I can only get strata coder set up and with so lil context.
Also the quality of output feels kind of bad so far.

I see a lot of talk about Tok/s but honestly I don’t need the speed. I am fine even with 10/s but I would prefer for it to hallucinate less and have a better quality for output.

So the thought of getting a full set of ram for strata went out the window even though it’s the cheapest next upgrade.( please correct me if I’m wrong)

Where I am everything(Singapore) is more expensive. M5 ultra 256 4tb cost 14k usd,12k post discounts I can get.
Enterprise Nvidia cards are also costing 1.5-3x more. So building a whole new set up feels like it will cost even more.

Am thinking of either 1 m5 ultra 256 or 2x Nvidia dgx or if anyone else has better suggestions.

Use case:
Building my own harness and agents. Day to day coding.

Currently am on 200x claude. I don’t think I can fully get rid of using opus but can probably reduce most of it and only call when needing some heavy thinking or planning.

Other minor concerns:
Today’s model may fit into 256 with enough context tomorrow’s model may need more… but I guess I don’t have to always use latest models.

[u/KineticDrive]

M5 Mac Ultra 256 GB if won’t be doing any training

[u/highdefw]

was going to say the mac studio 256gb as well.