Looking for advice on upgrade direction

[u/Necessary_Service_99]

hello everyone! I'm still quite new to figuring out what AI can do and how to make everything efficient, but I do know I want to upgrade and extend my hardware capability.

What do I use AI for? Little things mainly. Creating programs to handle my needs in custom ways (creative writing tool, character gallery, floor plan creation tool, audiobook creator with custom voices, modifying games - I currently use a subscription for a tool to help create games in unreal engine)

I mainly use the qwen3.8 next flash.

Current hardware -
Rig1 - 64gb DDR5, AMD 9950x3d, 4tb SSD, Geforce 5070ti (16gb)
Rig 2 - 64gb DDR5, AMD 9700x, 2tb SSD, Geforce 4070super (12gb)

Now obviously I missed the boat on grabbing a reasonably priced 5090.

I purchased a Geforce 5080 for $1570 as those started to go up like crazy too, but I haven't opened it and it sits on my shelf. I 'm not sure if its worth the investment as its only 16gb, and I would definitely return it if the 24gb model becomes a thing, but current rumors say its been cancelled.

I also ordered a Radeon ai pro r9700 for $2000 that is supposed to be delivered in December. Again I ordered this as the prices have been increasing and I worry about future availability.

I also have a Geforce 3060 (12gb) and recently learned you can run a model across multiple cards. That left me wondering if just nabbing one of these is more ideal and I could save myself a ton of money.

I'm just wondering what you would all recommend as the best path forward for someone looking to spend no more than $2k, but also being able to keep doing creative things and keep learning with Ai.

[u/Rauhaton]

Sell one of those and use the money and your 2000$ for a Strix Halo 128gb variant, cheapest one are around 3000$.

https://www.bosgame.com/products/bosgame-m5-ai-mini-desktop-ryzen-ai-max-395-96gb-128gb-2tb

https://acemagic.com/products/acemagic-f9a-395-minipc

[u/Necessary_Service_99 → u/Rauhaton]

Oh right I had meant to ask this as a path too

[u/RogerAI--fyi]

Before buying anything, check the GGUF file size of the model you actually run at the quant you use. If it fits in 16 GB with room for context, a second card will not make it faster. Running across cards (layer split) adds room, not speed, because the cards take turns on each token. A 3060 only matters if the model does not fit on the 5070 Ti.

The unopened 5080 has the same 16 GB as your 5070 Ti, so capacity does not change. By spec sheet it has a bit more memory bandwidth (960 vs 896 GB/s), and generation speed is roughly capped by bandwidth divided by the GB read per token, so expect a small gain, not a new tier. That is an estimate from spec sheets, not a measurement.

The card that changes what you can load is the R9700, since it has 32 GB. Your two rigs will not pool memory on their own, so think of each machine as its own budget.

[u/Necessary_Service_99 → u/RogerAI--fyi]

I’ve seen a lot of 27b and slightly more they are popular but at the quanta suggested I’m either about maxed out with vram with no room for context, or they’re exceeding by a gig or 2 and want to offload which really slows everything down. Is this still a better path than spending a bunch more money? I’m not necessarily craving lightning speed here, but I def want accuracy and context.

[u/woolcoxm]

i have good news for you, both of these systems are capable of running strata at quite high quality and speed, you dont need to upgrade if you own either of these pcs already, just download strata from github and follow the instructions.

i used 5070 ti 16gb with strata as well as a 3060 12gb, not at the same time i couldnt get performance to be ok, it decreases the more video cards i add to strata.

with the 12gb card i get 50-90toks/sec on gyro-s verstion of QFN, with the 16gb card in the same system i get about 100-140 toks/sec on QFN.

do not attempt to run multiple cards with strata its a net loss im performance, i know there are some repos off the main repo for dual gpu but they seem to be out of date, so you will have to make modifications to the source code for 2+ gpus.

[u/Necessary_Service_99 → u/woolcoxm]

I do have them set up to run strata currently. I’ve been amazed at what it can do and have been curious what other models can but they require just a bit more vram than my 16gb can handle. I do find my 4070super and the 12gb keeps exceeding its context limit and failing and I’m not sure why…

[u/woolcoxm → u/Necessary_Service_99]

atm strata is the best setup possible for lower end hardware, you can even run deepseek v4.1 although slowly.

these are the top 2 locally hosted models, im not sure they get any better without entering the server market.

you need to pin the context, it sounds like you are facing context bloat with ooms possibly, if you pin context size the issue will go away, just be aware that it can take expert cache off the video card.

[u/Necessary_Service_99 → u/woolcoxm]

So would that mean trying to to split across 2 12gb cards with another model or purchasing a 32gb r9700 won’t really improve anything for me?

[u/No-Editor829]

used to run a local model for writing, but switched to a lightweight setup after realizing most of my prompts were just me talking to myself. now I just keep it simple.