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These devices were great when they were cheaper than the DGX Spark. But when they cost the same price (unless the Spark has shot up too), there's no reason to
by Catloafdev 3mo ago
These devices were great when they were cheaper than the DGX Spark.
But when they cost the same price (unless the Spark has shot up too), there's no reason to buy this over a Spark.
The Spark is literally a faster version of this, with better software support.
Edit: And I say that as an owner of a Ryzen AI Max 395 device.
- grubbs 3mo agoCheapest I've been able to get a DGX Spark FE is now around $4700 just FYI. This is from multiple vendors in higher-ed.
- Catloafdev 3mo agoAh ya then that's a bit of a gap. For anyone considering these devices, the only reason I would recommend against them is if you plan on getting multiple to link together - the DGX Spark has a much, much faster interconnect bandwidth ceiling than the AMD devices do. Otherwise, they're great!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- frugalmail 3mo agoI'm looking at Amazon and I see $4k GB10 devices right now (not an affiliate link) https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Supercomputer-Superchip-Supports-Stackable/dp/B0G1MQYHRD https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Supercomputer-Superchip-Supports...
- 827a 3mo agoMicrocenter has them marked at $4500 right now (that's with the 4TB SSD) [1]. I suspect it comes down to what you're using it for; if you're looking for a general purpose computer that's also solid at AI, the AMD machine is better. But if you want the best possible AI machine at below $5k... actually you should probably just buy an RTX 3090 or 5090. But if the 128gb of memory is critical, then yeah DGX Spark is it. [1] https://www.microcenter.com/product/699008/nvidia-dgx-spark https://www.microcenter.com/product/699008/nvidia-dgx-spark
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoI can't wait for the memory price crisis to end so these things drop in price so I can get a second one.
- icedchai 3mo agoYep, the only reason I bought mine (in late 2025, before hardware prices went totally crazy) was because it was half the price of a Spark. I spent a while fiddling around with the right Linux kernel, kernel firmware, ROCm installs, etc.
- seemaze 3mo agoI dropped a Framework mainboard in rack mount case and use it as a speedy low power x86 homelab as well as an inference server.
- kcb 3mo agoAbility to run any OS is a pretty nice benefit versus the spark.
- kristianpaul 3mo agoNice benefit is NVPF4 from the Spark (GB10)
- bigyabai 3mo agoAs 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.
- flakiness 3mo ago> that goes for like 90% of ARM hardware on Linux. And that's where AMD CPU shines vs ARM.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- cyanydeez 3mo agoyeah, if only there wasn't some global hegemony that immediately drove up the price of all memory everywhere...
- tracker1 3mo agoThat's the rub... this platform was supposed to be around $1200-1400 maxed out, but now it's $4k, which is insane.
- adrian_b 3mo agoDepends on what you use it for. The CPU of Ryzen is better than that of DGX Spark, especially for modern programs that have been updated to use AVX-512 (i.e. it has a significantly higher multithreaded performance). Only for GPU applications the NVIDIA system is likely to be better.
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoFor inference, the prefill on the DGX Spark is like 5x the speed. Decode about the same (both bandwidth limited to about the same memory speed, unfortunately). Difference is on the Spark you can use and learn CUDA, vLLM, SGlang etc which is the industry standard. I bought mine (ASUS version) back in December with the intent to learn that stack of stuff. I've been on and off with it but it seems to have paid off, looks like I might be getting work in the inference serving space.
- verdverm 3mo agoSpark has also gone up in price, my second cost me $500 more than my first a couple months earlier (both this spring)