alt Hacker NewsI admittedly haven't done a ton of research lately on AI capable PC hardware because of how nuts prices are right now, so I might be missing something...
...but all the AMD 395+ machines I can find are even more expensive than the aforementioned cheapest Mac Studio. Mac Studio starts at $2,000 (only 32GB), AMD 395+ 128GB machines seem to start at $3,000 from what I can see.
the QWEN-3.5-CODER-NEXT fits in half the 128GB and the rest for context. with the right plugins, particularly context pruning, ive got it running over night by writing plans then implementing.
i do not know if theres a smaller model with same capability, but model size and context window at 128 seems like a sweet spot.
token speed really isnt a bother because im either just multitasking or working on the filling in the missing details.
regardless, i think comparing first VRAM sizes w/target model then speed for your cost efficiency. plus, a healthy skepticism of mac hardware costs.