| ▲ | guessmyname 4 hours ago |
| > I personally dropped $20k on a high end desktop - 768G of RAM, 96 cores, 96 GB Blackwell GPU - last October, before RAM prices spiked […] 768GB of RAM is insane… Meanwhile, I’ve been going back and forth for over a year about spending $10k on a MacBook Pro with 128GB. I can’t shake the feeling I’d never actually use that much, and that, long term, cloud compute is going to matter more than sinking money into a single, non-upgradable machine anyway. |
|
| ▲ | rafaelmn 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Your battery is going to suffer because of the extra ram as well. I don't know your workloads, but for me personally 64 GB is the ceiling buffer on RAM - I can run entire k8s cluster locally with that and the M5 Pro with top cores is same CPU as M5 Max. I don't need the GPU - the local AI story and OSS models are just a toy for my use-cases and I'm always going to shell out for the API/frontier capabilities. I'm even thinking of 48 config because they already have those on 8% discounts/shipped by Amazon and I never hit that even on my workstation with 64 GB. |
| |
| ▲ | zozbot234 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Your battery is going to suffer because of the extra ram as well. No, it won't. The power drain of merely refreshing DRAM is negligible, it's no higher than the drain you'd see in S3 standby over the same time period. | | |
| ▲ | cduzz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I suspect this is one of those "it depends" situations; does the 128gb vs 64gb sku have more chips or denser chips? If "more chips" probably it'll draw a tiny bit more power than the smaller version. If the "denser" chips, it may be "more power draw" but such a tiny difference that it's immaterial. Similarly, having more cache may mean less SSD activity, which may mean less energy draw overall. If I had a chip to put on the roulette table of this "what if" I'd put it on the "it won't make a difference in the real world in any meaningful way" square. | |
| ▲ | 3form 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Given the DRAM refresh is part of S3 standby, I'm afraid this is circular reasoning. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | barrkel 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Look at the way age gating is going in a global coordinated push. Can control of compute be far behind? It wasn't my primary motivator but it hasn't made me regret my decision. I hummed and hawed on it for a good few months myself. |
| |
| ▲ | WillAdams 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Just look at ITAR and the various attempts at legislating 3D printing and CNC machining of firearms parts to see one justification point of that. | |
| ▲ | jusssi 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Can control of compute be far behind? How is this going to work? You need uncontrolled compute for developing software. Any country locking up that ability too much will lose to those who don't. | | |
| ▲ | cesarb 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > How is this going to work? You need uncontrolled compute for developing software. I've read about companies where all software developers have to RDP to the company's servers to develop software, either to save on costs (sharing a few powerful servers with plenty of RAM and CPU between several developers) or to protect against leaks (since the code and assets never leave the company's Citrix servers). |
|
|
|
| ▲ | gzread 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > 768GB of RAM is insane. Before this price spike, it used to be you could get a second-hand rack server with 1TB of DDR4 for about $1000-2000. People were massively underestimating the performance of reasonably priced server hardware. You can still get that, of course, but it costs a lot more. The recycling company I know is now taking the RAM out of every server and selling it separately. Apple hardware is incredibly overpriced. |
|
| ▲ | FpUser 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| My home server has 512GB RAM, 48 cores, my 4 desktops are 16 cores 128GB, 4060GPU each. Server is second hand and I paid around $2500 for it. Just below $3000 price for desktops when I built them. All prices are in Canadian Pesos |
| |
| ▲ | xyzsparetimexyz 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Canadian Pesos? | | |
| ▲ | doubled112 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Jokes because the Canadian dollar’s value isn’t very high right now. See a $1100 GPU on eBay, but it’s in the US? Actually a $1900 GPU. A colleague were just talking about how well he timed the purchase of his $700 24GB 3090. | |
| ▲ | heffer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Please, it's actually Cambodian Dollhairs or Canuckistan Pesos. | |
| ▲ | FpUser 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is sarcasm. Our dollar which used to be on par with US is no more. |
|
|
