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Totally depends on your hardware, and what you tend to ask it. What are you running? What do you use it for? Do you prefer speed over accuracy?
I have a MacBook 2 pro (Apple silicon) and would kind of like to replace Google's Gemini as my go-to LLM. I think I'd like to run something like Mistral, probably. Currently I do have Ollama and some version of Mistral running, but I almost never used it as it's on my laptop, not my phone.
I'm not big on LLMs and if I can find an LLM that I run locally and helps me get off of using Google Search and Gimini, that could be awesome. Currently I use a combo of Firefox, Qwant, Google Search, and Gemini for my daily needs. I'm not big into the direction Firefox is headed, I've heard there are arguments against Qwant, and using Gemini feels like the wrong answer for my beliefs and opinions.
I'm looking for something better without too much time being sunk into something I may only sort of like. Tall order, I know, but I figured I'd give you as much info as I can.
Honestly perplexity, the online service, is pretty good.
As for local running, one question first: how much RAM does your Mac have? This is basically the factor for what model you can and should run.
8GB
8GB?
You might be able to run Qwen3 4B: https://huggingface.co/mlx-community/Qwen3-4B-4bit-DWQ/tree/main
But honestly you don't have enough RAM to spare, and even a small model might bog things down. I'd run Open Web UI or LM Studio with a free LLM API, like Gemini Flash, or pay a few bucks for something off openrouter. Or maybe Cerebras API.
...Unfortunely, LLMs are very RAM intensive, and >4GB (more realistically like 2GB) is not going to be a good experience :(
Good to know. I'd hate to buy a new machine strictly for running an LLM. Could be an excuse to pickup something like a Framework 16, but realistically, I don't see myself doing that. I think you might be right about using something like Open Web UI or LM Studio.
Yeah, just paying for LLM APIs is dirt cheap, and they (supposedly) don't scrape data. Again I'd recommend Openrouter and Cerebras! And you get your pick of models to try from them.
Even a framework 16 is not good for LLMs TBH. The Framework desktop is (as it uses a special AMD chip), but it's very expensive. Honestly the whole hardware market is so screwed up, hence most 'local LLM enthusiasts' buy a used RTX 3090 and stick them in desktops or servers, as no one wants to produce something affordable apparently :/
@brucethemoose @WhirlpoolBrewer
*1650 and it works like a charm 🤌🏾
You mean GPU? Yeah, it's good, I was strictly talking about purchasing a laptop for LLM usage, as most are less than ideal for the money. Laptop vram pools are relatively small and SO-DIMMS are usually very slow.
Things will get much better once the "Max" AMD SKUs proliferate.