181–190 of 274 posts
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As far as I know, you can use other OSes once the Spark's firmware is updated with LVFS. You'll need a custom-built distro image, but that goes for like 90% of ARM hardware on Linux.
> that goes for like 90% of ARM hardware on Linux. And that's where AMD CPU shines vs ARM.
I really want a 128gb+ machine but it's brutal to be at only 256 GB/s for $4k (especially with the drawbacks of both ARM and AMD). I fear that by the time the RTX Spark comes out it'd have to be $6k, and by the time a 128gb or more machine with 700+ GB/s comes out it'd be at $10k, way out of most consumers' hands. Edit: capitalized gb/s to GB/s.
Yeah, folks should be aware that if you're filling up the memory on a Strix Halo for an inference workload, you're going to be getting uncomfortably slow token rates. Like, DS4 (a 1-bit quantization of DeepSeek V4 Flash) runs at something like 9-13 tokens/second, with a loooong time to first token. It is not a realistic interactive coding model for agentic use. I like my Strix Halo and keep it chewing on stuff, mostl…
ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_tps,kvcache_bytes 2048,2048,202.02,128,15.31,52184460 4096,2048,211.03,128,14.64,80373132 6144,2048,208.04,128,14.59,108561804 8192,2048,200.78,128,14.43,136750476 10240,2048,203.04,128,14.37,164939148 12288,2048,200.82,128,14.27,193127820 14336,2048,198.62,128,14.22,221316492 16384,2048,196.14,128,14.20,249505164 18432,2048,189.48,128,14.13,277693836 20480,2048,186.59,128,14.06,305882508 22528,2048,183.88,128,13.99,334071180 24576,2048,183.38,128,13.92,362259852 26624,2048,181.57,128,13.87,390448524 28672,2048,183.46,128,13.80,418637196 30720,2048,181.80,128,13.73,446825868 32768,2048,175.93,128,13.55,475014540 34816,2048,175.42,128,13.46,503203212
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, folks should be aware that if you're filling up the memory on a Strix Halo for an inference workload, you're going to be getting uncomfortably slow token rates. Like, DS4 (a 1-bit quantization of DeepSeek V4 Flash) runs at something like 9-13 tokens/second, with a loooong time to first token. It is not a realistic interactive coding model for agentic use. I like my Strix Halo and keep it chewing on stuff, mostl…
this is not true. q2 Deepseek flash works on AMD Strix halo with pretty good results. Benchmark except: ctx_tokens,prefill_tokens,prefill_tps,gen_tokens,gen_tps,kvcache_bytes 2048,2048,202.02,128,15.31,52184460 4096,2048,211.03,128,14.64,80373132 6144,2048,208.04,128,14.59,108561804 8192,2048,200.78,128,14.43,136750476 10240,2048,203.04,128,14.37,164939148 12288,2048,200.82,128,14.27,193127820 14336,2048,198.62,128,1…
Which almost exactly matches the benchmark you just linked. Looks like it's possible to goose it to 15 tokens per second with a tiny context, but why would I want a giant model with a 2k context? DeepSeek is too big to be fast enough on a Strix Halo.
To be clear, if you think that's comfortable for interactive use, more power to you. But, I'm not waiting for that. I'll pay DeepSeek to host it for me. Their token prices are quite cheap and their cached tokens are even cheaper...and they have the most effective caching in the business, as far as I can tell. Even naively using the API you get 80-90% cached token rate. If you use Reasonix, you get ~98% cached token rate. I just built a feature for an app I'm working on for $0.10 for 20 minutes of work. Not bad at all.
In case it saves anyone some time (from the article): "The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395(Strix Halo) processor has been available since Spring 2025 and the Halo doesn’t offer anything new on that front." It has the same 256 GB/s memory bandwidth limit as every board previously, not sure why this is even being released right now as if it's some new fangled thing - you can go get a Framework Desktop for roughly the same price…
It's being released right now because it's massively profitable and in high demand and has actually gone up in price over the past year so obviously AMD wants to cash in on that instead of selling these units to PC manufacturers at a lower price.
The memory shortages won't last forever; when companies start adding capacity I wouldn't be surprised to see massive sticks of RAM being sold for consumers.
On the high end side, it is too slow. On the low end size, it waste money on VRAM.
i always thought Ryzen AI Halo, together with DGS Spark, has mismatched compute capacity with memory size. Given 128GB VRAM, people would want to run large models, but the GPU compute is constraint in these types of use case. If the box runs models that don't need high compute, then there is no need of 128GB VRAM. On the high end side, it is too slow. On the low end size, it waste money on VRAM.
I don't think I'd pay $4k for it today though, 2 years ago and less than half the price feels like a good machine. I'd be very disappointed in it today for $4k.
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I ... don't find the Ubuntu on my Spark to be dogshit? It's ... fine? It's just Ubuntu. Hasn't given me any grief and it's so far the only vendor I've seen that actually ships a properly supported Linux on an ARM64 device for Linux, so there's that. I use my ASUS GX10 as my daily driver, my primary workstation. Only thing that doesn't work for me on it is Spotify (probably some DRM thing). Oh, and there's no Signal A…
The unusual bootloader and custom hardware makes modifying and upgrading the OS a challenge. I work on robots that need a custom OS image loaded on the machine. The Nvidia Ubuntu version makes that a huge pain in the ass. They've got binary-only drivers that have to be there, the install/upgrade process is finicky and prone to failure (always recoverable, so far, but all the techs in production I work with have a har…
Regular Ubuntu or Fedora ISOs do work out of the box
Just needs the Nvidia GPU driver install afterwards
(And the realtek 10gbe module oot, or blocklist if not used)
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This. I bought Framework Desktop in November 2025 with almost these exact specs for ~$2.5k
I got the EVO-X2 for $1,599! In 44+ years of buying computers, I've seen some appreciation, but nothing like this. Going from $1,599 to ~$3,500 in a year is just insane.
Regretting not buying the Framework back when it was around $2k.
[0] https://www.gmktec.com/products/gmktec-evo-x3-ai-mini-pc-amd...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unusual bootloader and custom hardware makes modifying and upgrading the OS a challenge. I work on robots that need a custom OS image loaded on the machine. The Nvidia Ubuntu version makes that a huge pain in the ass. They've got binary-only drivers that have to be there, the install/upgrade process is finicky and prone to failure (always recoverable, so far, but all the techs in production I work with have a har…
No the Spark uses UEFI + ACPI Regular Ubuntu or Fedora ISOs do work out of the box Just needs the Nvidia GPU driver install afterwards (And the realtek 10gbe module oot, or blocklist if not used)
For Jetson Orin and later:
You can download an ISO from https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetpack/downloads and that'll work. Other distributions are still a bit of a mess though but Yocto is supported now.
I really want a 128gb+ machine but it's brutal to be at only 256 GB/s for $4k (especially with the drawbacks of both ARM and AMD). I fear that by the time the RTX Spark comes out it'd have to be $6k, and by the time a 128gb or more machine with 700+ GB/s comes out it'd be at $10k, way out of most consumers' hands. Edit: capitalized gb/s to GB/s.
I think once someone comes up with a machine which has both it will easily sell for $10000 and people will be queueing to buy it.