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Older Xeon PC competes with modern Mac Studios on LLM performance

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

A 2014-era Xeon-based computer with 128GB of DDR3 RAM and two GPUs (RTX 4070 and RTX 3060) was tested against two Apple Mac Studios equipped with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips. The Macs proved to be two to four times faster in running large language models, despite costing significantly more. The entire Xeon platform, excluding GPUs, was priced at €638, while the Macs were substantially more expensive. AI

IMPACT Provides insights into hardware cost-performance trade-offs for running large language models locally.

RANK_REASON This item compares hardware performance for running LLMs, offering an opinionated analysis rather than a new release or research finding.

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AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Older Xeon PC competes with modern Mac Studios on LLM performance

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5 / 100
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Commentary
This item compares hardware performance for running LLMs, offering an opinionated analysis rather than a new release or research finding.
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High
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. Towards AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Gian Luca Bailo, Ph.D. ·

    A 2014 Xeon vs Two Mac Studios on a 125B Model: Who Wins?

    <h4><em>128 GB of DDR3 on a Chinese X99 board against Apple’s M5 Max and M5 Ultra. The Macs are two to almost four times faster. The X99 costs a quarter to an eighth as much.</em></h4><p><em>Written with Claude (Anthropic), which also helped me run the tests. Who did what is at t…

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