I am unsure whether to buy the M4 Max Max Studio with 128GB ram and 500GB/s bandwidth or M1 Ultra Mac Studio with 128GB ram and 800 GB/s bandwidth.
The Max costs 4400€ The Ultra costs 3500€ second-hand
What would you buy? I am not going to use it only for LLMs but for coding, machine learning, gaming.
The community consensus is that bandwith is key. An extra 300gb/s is a big bonus.
Your taking a small amount of risk with second hand but generally laptops will last a good long while and an extra thousand or so off for a better performing product is a decent deal IMO. Ive been using my second hand laptop for over a decade now, so I would probably be biased to take the dice roll on used after testing it out in person.
I hope it works out for you! Man I wish I could get my rig upgraded on the cheap but GPU market is insane. I wonder how the nvidia digits or and strix will compare to a Mac?
They’re looking at the apple desktops I think which have an even better history for longevity. Fewer moving parts and since they’re generally at home plugged into a wall they live a less dangerous life than a laptop.
Yeah i was unsure whether the increased risk is worth it, but considering the lower price i think it is.
I think i am going to get it from refurbed.it