Guide
Is RTX Spark worth it for local LLMs vs Mac Studio vs Strix Halo?
Worth it depends on memory, whether a price exists, and whether you trust a vendor’s own performance claim. This page does not pick a winner, because it has no shared benchmark.
RTX Spark, from NVIDIA
NVIDIA’s product page says up to a 6,144-core Blackwell RTX GPU, up to a 20-core Grace CPU, up to 1 petaflop of FP4 AI performance, and up to 128 GB of unified memory. No dollar price was on that page when it was opened on 14 October 2026. NVIDIA RTX Spark “Up to” is NVIDIA’s wording. The 1 petaflop figure is FP4 AI performance as NVIDIA states it, not a llama.cpp tokens/s measurement.
NVIDIA’s blog dated 13 October 2026 says RTX Spark laptops will be available on Friday 16 October, and that Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B is a 74B mixture-of-experts model with 9B active parameters, packed into 24 GB with 2-bit quantization, available Thursday 15 October. NVIDIA blog, 13 October 2026 Those dates and the 24 GB packing are NVIDIA’s. The blog does not publish a laptop price or a llama-bench table.
Mac Studio, from this catalog
Mac Studio M5 Max 128GB lists 128 GB unified memory and 614 GB/s, bandwidthSourceUrl https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/specs/. Mac Studio M5 Max 128GB: 5810 USD estimate, EUR 5190 incl. VAT. Global prices (USD), EUR available. FX_EUR_USD estimate. Dated 2026-10-14. estimated true. sourceUrl null. Global prices (USD), EUR available. EUR includes VAT. USD is an FX estimate. No shop listing was checked. Mac Studio M5 Max 36GB is 36 GB at 460 GB/s, source https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/specs/. Mac Studio M5 Max 36GB: 2900 USD estimate, EUR 2590 incl. VAT. Global prices (USD), EUR available. FX_EUR_USD estimate. Dated 2026-10-14. estimated true. sourceUrl null. Global prices (USD), EUR available. EUR includes VAT. USD is an FX estimate. No shop listing was checked. The Apple pages are the bandwidth citations. The euro prices are not.
Strix Halo, from AMD
AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 page lists a maximum of 128 GB of 256-bit LPDDR5x, memory speed LPDDR5x-8000, Radeon 8060S graphics with 40 cores at 2900 MHz, a default TDP of 55 W, and a configurable TDP of 45–120 W. The page does not state a GB/s bandwidth figure or a price. AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Do not turn 8000 MT/s into a GB/s number on this site; AMD did not print one there.
Lucebox, a vendor, sells a workstation it calls the Zero 495 with a Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 495, 128 or 192 GB at 273 GB/s, plus a Radeon AI PRO R9700 at 32 GB and 640 GB/s. On 14 October 2026 its page showed a developer price starting at USD 6,499 / EUR 6,999, described as USD 500 / EUR 500 off a list price of USD 6,999 / EUR 7,499, with 192 GB adding USD 2,000 / EUR 2,199. Lucebox That is the vendor’s own price and its own 273 GB/s claim. It is not the AMD 395 page, and the 495 name is Lucebox’s, not a second figure from AMD.
Compare catalog Macs with the calculator, still an estimate: 70B Q4 on Apple hardware in the catalog.
RTX Spark
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Mac Studio
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