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?
Have you considered the framework desktop? Uses amd strix halo. The same cost for the Mac mini (2k?) gets you around 90gb vram, out of a 128gb unified ram configuration.