Thinking about a new Mac, my MPB M1 2020 16 GB can only handle about 8B models and is slow.
Since I looked it up I might as well shared the LLM-related specs:
Memory bandwidth
M4 Pro (Mac Mini): 273GB/s
M4 Max (Mac Studio): 410 GB/s
Cores cpu / gpu
M4 pro 14 / 20
M4 Max 16 / 40
Cores & memory bandwidth is of course important, but with the Mini I could have 64 GB ram instead of 36 (within my budget that is fixed for tax reasons).
Feels like the Mini with more memory would be better. What do you think?
of course, I haven’t looked at models >9B for now. So I have to decide if I want to run larger models quickly or even larger models quickly-but-not-as-quick-as-on-a- Mac-Studio.
Or I could just spend the money on API credits :D
Use API credits. 64GB can barely run a 70B model. I have a MacBook Pro M3 Max with 128GB and can run those and even slightly bigger models. But results are underwhelming. Not bought for LLM only, but if I would have, I would be disappointed.