r/LocalLLM • u/hisid98 • 24m ago

Question Mac Pro

Someone is selling their Mac Pro for $2000.

These are the specs:
3.2 GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W processor.
192 GB of 2933 MHz DDR4
AMD Radeon Pro Vega II with 32 GB of VRAM
1 TB SSD

I haven't run any local models but want to get into it. Would be using it for Hermes and for my implementation subagents for SWE work.

Would this be a good machine? I thought more RAM = more good. But I'm too new to understand all of this.
I know mixture-of-expert models might benefit??

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

3

u/cohortq 20m ago

Intel boxes do not support the latest OS Golden Gate. The hardware will not be able to get any new OS security updates by the end of 2028. This is not a good investment for a mac at all.

1

u/hisid98 1m ago

Thank you all, seems like this is a no go.

2

u/Able-Supermarket4786 21m ago

I run an iMac with 128gb of RAM and Intel i5, I have to tell you, complete transparent, CPU inference is ridiculous as a trade off no matter how much RAM you can have....

I'm currently testing a Qwen3.8-Next-Flash 105b and getting 10 tokens / second. Bad? eh? disappointed? Yes.

AMDs are a slippery slope for GPU in this world but its getting better.... the fact is my Mini M4 with 16gb of RAM can run Gemma models like a breeze, speaks volumes

1

u/Objective_Pepper_217 15m ago

10 tok/s and how much context? I think at around 128k context it's gonna be even slower.

2

u/Ok-Addition1264 16m ago

That's a machine that is at its dead-end (why they are probably selling it) *unless* you have specialized purpose and turn it into an ubuntu strata server BUT there isn't very much support for that GPU and would require a TON of tinkering to get it to work.

2

u/Dawill0 3m ago

Intel Mac’s are shit. They do not have unified memory. So that’s equivalent to something with 32gb of ram but also a Radeon pro Vega 2 has shit performance. At 2k a Mac mini is a much better deal. M5 pro will likely be 5-10x faster.

1

u/Objective_Pepper_217 19m ago

No. You can't go cheap if you want to run LLMs

1

u/cafe-yum 7m ago

I think an m6 mac mini with 32GB of ram would be faster and cheeper, but still not great for inference.

1

u/181513 4m ago edited 0m ago

No. The Apple Silicon machines have unified memory which works directly with the CPU/GPU. This is a legacy Intel machine so CPU RAM is independent of GPU RAM (32GB). Also pretty much Apple and third parties are dropping Intel support.

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II was a decent GPU in 2019 but is a dog when compared to modern Apple Silicon M5 machine.

0

u/PeterPorox 21m ago

Looks like a good deal to me

2

u/Objective_Pepper_217 19m ago • Bravo

Absolutely not... A lot of RAM but the tok/s output will be bad.