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32GB VRAM under $1K sounds perfect for local LLMs—until you benchmark IPEX-LLM against CUDA. Arc Pro B70 tok/s lags RTX 3090 on 70B offload, wins only at 32B context headroom. Buy Intel for the gigabytes, buy used NVIDIA for the speed.
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Architecture Guide Your Threadripper already owns the 70B path—CPU-only hits 2.1–7.1 tok/s on DDR5 bandwidth, beats dual RTX 3090 cost for batch jobs, and leaves GPU free. Honest benchmarks, no GPU required.
Architecture Guide Wrong driver kills AMD ROCm on Windows—ROCDXG not Adrenalin, clean install required. Full consumer GPU matrix with Linux native, WSL2 grades, and honest tok/s numbers. Install right, skip the forum archaeology.
Architecture Guide Mac Studio 128GB killed in May 2026, M5 Ultra pushed to Q4—M4 Max 96GB is your only 70B Q8_0 option until 2027. We map every tier, benchmark AMD's Strix Halo rival, and tell you whether to buy or wait.
Hardware Comparison Memory bandwidth predicts LLM inference speed on Apple Silicon. Every M-series chip compared — M1 through M4 Max and M Ultra. One surprising finding: the M3 Pro is slower than the M2 Pro.
Architecture Guide 16GB fits 14B Q4 at full quality. Qwen 2.5 14B at 31 tok/s; Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B with --n-cpu-moe is the new MoE pick. Full VRAM fit table.
Benchmark Your GPU claims 85 tok/s but hits 12 on real models. 340+ verified llama-bench results: exact Q4_K_M speeds from RTX 5090 to RX 7900 XTX.
Architecture Guide Master llama.cpp memory flags to squeeze 70B models into 8GB, cut VRAM use by 50%, and optimize inference speed. Complete guide with before/after benchmarks.
Architecture Guide Wrong driver kills AMD ROCm on Windows—ROCDXG not Adrenalin, clean install required. Full consumer GPU matrix with Linux native, WSL2 grades, and honest tok/s numbers. Install right, skip the forum archaeology.
Architecture Guide Exact VRAM tiers, real token speeds, and GPU picks for every model size from 7B to 70B. Updated March 2026 with Blackwell benchmarks and corrected specs.
Architecture Guide Gemma 4 is here — E2B to 31B dense. 24GB VRAM covers the flagship at Q4. Here's the VRAM breakdown for every Gemma 4 size and which GPU tier to buy.
Architecture Guide Llama 4, Qwen 3.5, Gemma 4, and Mistral Small 4 all fit differently. Exact VRAM and file sizes by model and tier—find what your GPU handles without guessing.
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