LocalLLaMA debates M5, Halo hardware

The thread reads like a reality check for local inference buyers: the market is still split between expensive brute-force boxes and promising but mostly speculative next-gen mobile silicon.

• –Mac Studio M5 Ultra rumors and Apple's RAM constraints dominate the "wait or buy now" debate
• –AMD's Halo refreshes and other memory-rich APUs look attractive for portable inference, but timing is still rumor-driven
• –Nvidia's DGX Spark and workstation GPUs remain the obvious power plays, though price and portability are the trade-offs
• –Several commenters are already hacking together multi-node Strix Halo setups, which suggests software support and memory topology are becoming as important as raw compute
• –The real bottleneck in hobbyist local LLM rigs is less FLOPs than usable unified memory, bandwidth, and mobility