“Nvidia has brought validity into the space… I think it’s also going to help the ecosystem move forward faster, right, because Nvidia and [AMD] are the two big players in this space, and both of us now being in this space not only drives the cloud ecosystem, it drives the AI ecosystem in the PC on Windows, and so we’re excited about that,” Tikoo said.
We’re still a few months away before we can see what material impact RTX Spark has on the broader industry, though we expect the initial rollout to be more muted than Nvidia’s keynote suggests. Although Nvidia plans to sell configurations of RTX Spark down as low as 16 GB of memory, the initial configuration will top out at 128 GB and likely demand several thousand dollars. At least initially, it’s a product that looks like it will appeal to a relatively small (but growing) market of AI developers, not dissimilar to Strix Halo.
AMD’s upcoming Gorgon Halo chips are largely a refresh of Strix Halo, leveraging the same Zen 5 cores for the CPU and RDNA 3.5 cores for the GPU, though with a bump up to 192 GB of unified memory. At least from the memory perspective, which continues to be an important specification for AI workloads, AMD has the edge. But, as we’re all well aware, there’s far more that goes into a platform (especially a consumer platform that costs several thousand dollars) than memory alone.
It will be interesting to see how the dynamic between Nvidia and AMD plays out, as we expect Gorgon Halo and RTX Spark to arrive in the same window; AMD says Q3 for Gorgon Halo, while Nvidia has simply said “fall” for RTX Spark.
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usertests “I’m actually curious about what done, but when I look at their specs, their specs are 128 gigs of local memory. We’ve done it on Strix Halo. Their specs are a 20-core CPU. We have a 16-core / 32-thread CPU in here,” Tikoo said. “So, if you just compare the specs, I don’t see… now, Gorgon Halo, which is coming out in Q3, is going to be a better product.” Strix/Gorgon Halo can't be considered a gaming platform because of inflated prices. That leaves AI, and RDNA3.5 is way behind RDNA4/5 in AI performance per CU, as well as Spark. But Spark's theoretical performance is often held back by having similar memory bandwidth to Strix/Gorgon Halo. I could see someone talking themselves into going AMD for its broad x86 compatibility. Reply
RagingAardvark They'll never admit it, but the SW ecosystem gap is still HUGE. I saw how the sausage is made at AMD, and even when they have better HW specs they can not compare to Nvidia for AI SW stacks. We had to beg borrow and plead to get any perf libraries supported with ROCm. Basically you've got two choices with AMD for AI/ML: 1) Use Microsoft's HW-agnostic libraries (and AMD has a good team working with them). 2) Use only bare bones SW libraries that ROCm will support on a specific SKU, but forget using any perf libraries for performance or memory reduction. We were desperate to get any support for FlashAttention(1) on Radeon, while FlashAttention3 was already supported on CUDA. Want to do inference? Fine, you can do that (mostly) with AMD. Want to do almost anything more? Just use NVidia. I yanked out my AMD GPUs and rolled back to a 5 year old 12GB NV card to do basic training tasks out of sheer frustration. Was it slow? Yes. Did it work? YES! Couldn't say that about AMD. Reply
hotaru251 usertests said: can't be considered a gaming platform because of inflated prices thats like saying a maxed out imac isnt an imac because its vastly mroe expensive than the base model.. "gaming" tax has always existed. the fact that its more costly doesnt mean it isnt a gaming platform (i mean just because a 5090 is so costly doesnt mena its not a gaming gpu)..it just emans its got a high cost. while it will likely beat amd in "ai" like features (as few spend mroe on that stuff than nvidia) in stuff not using that it will likely perform worse. (and again this is vs already out stuff not whatever is upcoming from apple/amd and doubt nvidia is going to update this regularly like they do) Reply
usertests hotaru251 said: thats like saying a maxed out imac isnt an imac because its vastly mroe expensive than the base model.. "gaming" tax has always existed. the fact that its more costly doesnt mean it isnt a gaming platform (i mean just because a 5090 is so costly doesnt mena its not a gaming gpu)..it just emans its got a high cost. while it will likely beat amd in "ai" like features (as few spend mroe on that stuff than nvidia) in stuff not using that it will likely perform worse. (and again this is vs already out stuff not whatever is upcoming from apple/amd and doubt nvidia is going to update this regularly like they do) Gaming is just not the relevant use case for Strix Halo right now. You don't get these boxes with 128 GB RAM (soon 192 GB with Gorgon) for gaming, you get em for AI. But the Halo/Sparks with lesser 32 GB are also inflated in price from what I've seen, and people should head for laptops with dGPUs instead. In the handheld realm, Panther Lake looks superior on performance at low/typical TDPs, and Strix Halo handhelds saw massive price hikes a couple months ago. AYANEO NEXT 2 with Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo” costs up to $4,299, weighs 1.4kg, and may require airline approval formsAYANEO suspends NEXT 2 sales, Ryzen AI Max+ 395 handheld cost now too high Strix Halo feels like a beta test of the new InFO-oS "sea of wires" packaging that will be used with Zen 6 desktop CPUs. RDNA3.5 is showing its age. But it is going to be the correct product for some people even at $4k+. And if prices plummeted, then it would be great for many people. But I think Medusa Halo, whenever it comes out, will solve some of Strix's problems. Nvidia showed a Spark roadmap with 2 additional generations based on Rubin and Feynman. Coming in 2028 and 2030 if I'm reading it right. Reply
kealii123 "You know, we were the only game in town for almost two years now" Apple: "Am I a joke to you? " Reply
kealii123 But seriously, once you meet some minimum basic requirements, the #1 thing influencing the speed of LLMs is the memory speed, and these two have exactly the same. Meanwhile apple silicon devices can be triple or quadruple the memory bandwidth. Reply
hotaru251 kealii123 said: Apple: "Am I a joke to you? " they were. gaming on apple is still bad (playable but for $ you putting down its bad) even on the HALO products. Reply
Gururu Not sure how popular Strix Halo is, the coverage treats it with gloves and keeps it in the closet. There are some legit concerns being raised about the lack of RTX Spark performance data. All hype and no results might make for quite the popularity descent as we reach Fall. Reply
Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-executives-react-to-nvidias-rtx-spark-youre-just-wrong-if-you-dont-get-a-strix-halo-notebook#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
- NVIDIA Research Unlocks Advanced Grasping, Smarter Autonomous Driving and Agent Training at Scale
- AMD executives react to Nvidia’s RTX Spark — ‘you’re just wrong if you don’t get a Strix Halo notebook’
- NVIDIA Enables the Next Era Of Physical AI Research With Agent Skills For Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics And Vision AI
- Gigabyte showcases new Infinity products for its 40th anniversary — X870 Infinity Next halo motherboard boasts metal 3D-printed elements, Aero Wood goes dark, M
- NZXT showcases H6 mid-tower chassis, new Ultra RGB fans, and a white H2 offering — boundless RGB customization options take this case to a whole new level
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.