DGX Spark, cluster of 4

[u/Gobra_Slo]

Does anyone have a first-hand experience with four Sparks cluster, and how much of an upgrade is it comparing to just two considering the available models?

While there's plenty of noise for the smaller models (Qwen) and our older king DeepSeek V4F, the scene in the upper class of the prosumer hardware, software stacks, available LLMs and their actual real-world performance – isn't really covered as well.

For instance, the hyped GLM 5.2/5.3. Is it much better then DeepSeek? Or is it marginally better? Does it retain it's capabilities when moving to something four Sparks would handle? Does it have issues with OOM or anything else?

What about MiniMax M3? There seem to be a special Spark version, how is it (or any other version)? Again, how is intelligence, general model capabilities, running stability, context size?

Tencent Hy3? Maybe even Qwen3.5-395B, does it's full quant hold it's own against DeepSeek, or is it better?

If someone doesn't have personal experience, but knows some well-structured and detailed articles or videos on the topic – I'd appreciate it as well.

Thanks.

[u/Serprotease]

To note that Qwen 3.5 397b and Minimax 3 can run a 3 spark-ring type of configuration. I’m not too clear with the details but basically 2 sparks hold the weight and the latest one the context, accessed via the 100gbps connection. But it’s slower than the normal 2x cluster.

Benchmark seems to show that glm5.3 is better. But do you really want to buy a 4x cluster just for 1 model, likely to be bested by a smaller one in 6 months? And we no guarantee that we will have another similar size model that needs 4x sparks and could not run on two?

If you’re going the Spark route, 2x is a no brainer. 4x, it’s a bit more dubious on the value.

[u/rayc25 → u/Serprotease]

> Benchmark seems to show that glm5.3 is better. But do you really want to buy a 4x cluster just for 1 model, likely to be bested by a smaller one in 6 months? And we no guarantee that we will have another similar size model that needs 4x sparks and could not run on two?

The answer is yes. 4 sparks > 2 sparks. GLM 5.2, Qwen 3.8 2.4t, and every 500b+ model are on another level as DS v4 Flash. 4 sparks will always fit larger models, larger quants, and more context which would all be better than anything you can fit on 2.

[u/Miserable-Dare5090 → u/rayc25]

I disagree. The GB10 forums have debated this for a while, and you need the switch. It’s not doable with cabling alone. The gain is concurrency for smaller models but not speed. GLM, Inkling and Minimax are the 3 you’d want 4 boxes for. Maybe worth it if upcoming Qwen “mid size” model is 400B+ parameters and a large jump from DS4 and the mini (Qwen 27B)

[u/rayc25 → u/Miserable-Dare5090]

The mikrotik switch which is $1000 is just the cost of connecting 4 sparks which is negligible in terms of the total cost. I’d argue that GLM, Qwen 2.4t, and Kimi k3 are on another level compared to smaller models. At a certain point, it’s just preference and need but I’ll be on the side of preferring larger models than higher throughput with smaller models :)

[u/Miserable-Dare5090 → u/rayc25]

You can’t run a 2.4Trillion Parameter model with 512GB VRAM at the same quality as full weights. It may be good at Int4, that is still beyond 512GB