Alternatives at these prices

As CMP 170HX prices rose from about $1,200 in late July 2026 to about $2,300-2,500 by late September, members kept asking what else the money buys: V100s, A100 SXM4 conversions, AMD MI50 and MI250X, Intel Gaudi 2, Apple's Mac Studio, the DGX Spark and more. This page collects those comparisons by hardware family. Every price is as of the date of its post, in the currency the member used; they moved fast and many listings were one-offs. Measured speed against the RTX 3090, A100, DGX Spark and Mac Studio is on How the 170HX compares; the CMP's own price series is on Price history, July to October 2026 and Price history and market; unlocks on other NVIDIA cards are on Other CMP cards and other NVIDIA GPUs.

How to judge an alternative

Rule of thumb: memory bandwidth first, then enough compute, then the right tensor cores

Jeremy (Ends)'s framing for inference cards: memory bandwidth (GB/s) is the main figure of merit, then enough compute to keep the memory busy, then the right tensor cores. With enough bandwidth the lack of tensor cores can be brute-forced at modest overhead, which is why V100 SXM is still usable: four of them give about 3,600 GB/s theoretical (from his own 4x V100 32 GB SXM2 costing, below). The dual Huawei Atlas at about 300 GB/s fails the first test. On 2026-08-08 segmond framed it differently (prompt processing is compute-bound, token generation bandwidth-bound, latency mostly irrelevant), while Jeremy argued that P2P latency over PCIe is the main multi-card limit for MoE models.

Theory
Source: @segmond, 2026-08-08
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-08
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-31
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-10-04

How many cards make sense: 1 to 4, or as many as you can for the cheapest VRAM per GB

• Black Jesus (2026-08-14): buy no more than 1 to 4 cards because of idle power. DeepSeek V4 Flash (about 10B active) is no better than Qwen 27B, and CMP bandwidth is too low for Mistral Medium 128B. Source: @ashtray9843, 2026-08-14
• bayley_w: the cards get more interesting the more you buy. One card runs nothing very useful, 4 run DeepSeek V4 Flash (whose only quant is the vendor's mxfp4 mixed, 160 GB), and for 512 GB of VRAM the CMP route is about 3x cheaper than the next cheapest option; CMP VRAM costs less per GB than DDR5 RDIMMs. For only 64 GB, a pair of real V100 32 GB cards (about $700 each on eBay) with real drivers may be the better deal. Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-14
• Roger Smith (7 cards): 4 cards are needed for DeepSeek Flash 0731 and 8 for anything remotely interesting. Source: @rogersmith2026, 2026-08-14
• segmond (a rig of roughly 11 to 13 cards) runs Kimi K3 and said the CMP route gets more VRAM cheaper than any other means. Source: @segmond, 2026-08-14

More on card counts: How the 170HX compares and Large rigs (8 or more cards).

Contested 8 GB and 10 GB

64 GB through two V100s or two MI50s against one 170HX

DeeJay (2026-07-28): two cards for $2,600 in total give 128 GB at 1.5 TB/s per card, and nothing else comes close at about $3k (a DGX Spark was over $4k). ju5t5omedude: the cheapest other route to 64 GB is dual V100 or dual MI50 at $800 to $1,000. A single 64 GB card carries premiums for efficiency, packaging, power, diffusion (image and video) work and a modern-ish CUDA, with no split-model penalty unless you use tensor parallelism, and for a single card PCIe speed above Gen2 x4 does not matter. Jeremy (Ends) used the 2080 Ti 22 GB (about 600 GB/s) as the price floor for memory-bandwidth rentals.

Theory
Source: @deejay9983, 2026-07-28
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-07-29
Source: @ju5t5omedude, 2026-07-29

The ladder in September 2026: RTX 3090, CMP, MI250X, H20

Morrowmake (2026-09-20): an RTX 3090 about $1,500 for 24 GB, a CMP about $2,300 for 64 GB, an H20 about $10k. The V100 32 GB is also an option, the next step up from the CMP is the MI250X, and 40 GB A100s are "not a real option". Miséricorde mocked paying $2.5k for an R9700 (a 9070 XT with 32 GB) or $6k for a DGX Spark or GX10. PJ was offered a 16x V100 32 GB machine from an Australian university at about $534 to $543 per card; segmond: buy V100s if you will use them, but "assume you will never be able to sell it".

Reported
Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-09-20
Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-20
Source: @zingy90210, 2026-09-22
Source: @segmond, 2026-09-22

Price snapshots across families

Price checks that cover several kinds of card, oldest first.

2026-07-20: MI50, MI250X, A30X, V100 and 3090s

SkirtChaser: MI50 32 GB about $400 to 500; MI250X in limited supply at a firm $1,250 with its baseboard, with the connection still unsolved. Arcanum suggested the A30X (it should have Hynix HBM2e). arnold civardagezen: 32 GB V100s about $800 each, power hungry and bulky, and SXM2 needs an NVLink board; he dropped a 4x 16 GB V100 plan over 1,200 W of heat. Black Jesus suggested 2x 3090 or V100s for about 42 GB needs.

Reported
Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-07-20
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-07-20
Source: @ashtray9843, 2026-07-20
Source: @a.civardagezen, 2026-07-20

Late July: MI50, MI100, MI210, V100 32 GB and RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell

Samuel Hayden (2026-07-24): AMD MI50, MI100 and MI210 cards run LLMs through ROCm with vLLM or llama.cpp, but MI50-class prices are unattractive for their performance; they were a good option at $200 to $250. Luna quoted US prices of $700 to $900 for a V100 32 GB and $500 or more for an MI50 32 GB. chris.via.egnatia quoted China prices of $550 to $750 for a V100 32 GB and $450 for an MI50, and said a dual MI50 or V100 32 GB setup (about $500 each) runs what a single 170HX does. The RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Max-Q was 12k to 13k EUR in Europe (a geizhals listing).

Reported
Source: @a.civardagezen, 2026-07-24
Source: @ashtray9843, 2026-07-24
Source: @profdd, 2026-07-24
Source: @samuel_hayden., 2026-07-24
Source: @chris.via.egnatia, 2026-07-24
Source: @lunaroseoc, 2026-07-24

Early August: A6000, RTX A2000, RTX Pro 6000 and the Atlas 300I Duo

Posted 2026-08-03 to 08-05: A6000 $2k to 3k (Moliminous); RTX A2000 12 GB $500 to 700 and Blackwell RTX 2000 16 GB about $900 (quark2world); RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell about $5k to 6k to partners and about $11k retail, with a $900 listing called fake (quark2world), about $15,000 in South Korea and $9,000 to 10,000 in the US (gpulover). formatme suggested the Huawei Atlas 300I Duo (slow LPDDR4X) at $1.2k+, about $1k in bulk, but noted US rules ban importing Huawei Ascend and Atlas hardware (citing a Reuters report of 2026-06-26).

Reported
Source: @moliminous, 2026-08-03
Source: @quark2world, 2026-08-03
Source: @artistosu, 2026-08-03
Source: @counterstrikeaimgod, 2026-08-05
Source: @jimtjames, 2026-08-05

Why pay about $1,300 for a 170HX: MI50, 7900 XTX, 3090, V100 32 GB and V620

• quark2world (2026-08-08): at $1,000 a used RTX 3090 (24 GB, NVLink, resale about $700) is the safer buy. Source: @quark2world, 2026-08-08
• machinezero (2026-08-12) asked why pay about $1,300 for a 170HX when the RX 7900 XTX, RTX 3090, V100 32 GB and MI50 32 GB cost $400 to $1,000. Source: @machinezer0, 2026-08-12
• bayley_w: the MI50 and 7900 XTX have poor prefill, the 3090 lacks VRAM, and the V100 32 GB is 2x slower with too little VRAM. A card bought at $1,300 and put in a 4U server that already supports GPUs is a painless setup; choose hardware with tensor cores for prefill. Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-12
• ju5t5omedude raised the AMD V620 (32 GB, about $350); Adust said its 512 GB/s cripples dense models such as Qwen 27B; SkirtChaser put it about level with the MI50 32 GB. Source: @ju5t5omedude, 2026-08-12
  Source: @adusts, 2026-08-12
  Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-08-12

Contested

V100 above MI50 above V620?

• Jeremy (Ends) (2026-08-16) priced the cheapest CUDA VRAM pool as 4x 2080 Ti with NVLink at about $1,400. Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-16
• bentbean noted Alibaba selling three V100 32 GB cards for $1,500. Source: @bentbean_50370, 2026-08-17
• segmond: Qwen3.8-27B runs on a $350 V620; he urged pushing support for the MI50 and V620. Source: @segmond, 2026-08-17
• machinezero (2026-08-17): V100 > MI50 > V620, the V620 very slow. The V100 32 GB at about $600 is the only GPU with downward price pressure, and he expected A100 32 or 40 GB cards near $1,500 within 6 months. Source: @machinezer0, 2026-08-17
• Schaka disagreed: V620 > MI50, on RDNA2, ROCm and inference support. Source: @schakaqt, 2026-08-17

Contested

Mid-August: V100 32 GB at $450 to $700, CMP 90HX about $80, MI50 at $90

Prices between 2026-08-14 and 2026-08-23: V100 32 GB PCIe about $700 on eBay (bayley_w); V100 32 GB SXM2 about $450 each (cuddylac997, who is building 8x V100 in two NVLinked, watercooled pools of 128 GB); CMP 90HX about $80 locally against $250 to 300 for an RTX 3070 Ti (emogop); MI50 at $90 each (segmond). An A100 engineering sample was listed at about $2,000, and one MI100 owner noted it lacked vLLM support.

Reported
Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-14
Source: @cuddylac997, 2026-08-14
Source: @emogop, 2026-08-14
Source: @confident_lamb_62706, 2026-08-23
Source: @segmond, 2026-08-23

2026-08-19: V100, MI250X, Gaudi 2 servers and the NEC Vector Engine

days concluded the CMP 170HX may still be the best value even at inflated prices, and SpiralGlide said nothing else gives 128 GB of usable VRAM per box at that price. The V100 was about $600+ on eBay (about $1,200 for 64 GB) but slow; the MI250X had doubled in price in 1 to 2 months and needs a supporting server. Gaudi 2 8x 96 GB servers were listed for about $12.5k on lowendtalk, runnable with the vLLM Gaudi kernels, and govdeals sold 16 Supermicro SYS-820GH-TNR2 Gaudi servers for about $15k (local pickup). NEC Vector Engine 48 GB HBM2 cards were seen at about 300 EUR, but bayley_w said they are only a few TFLOPS, prefill like a CPU, and run their own Unix.

Reported
Source: @spiralglide, 2026-08-19
Source: @lrdimm, 2026-08-19
Source: @adusts, 2026-08-19
Source: @schakaqt, 2026-08-19
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-08-19
Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-19

Late August: A100, V100, 3090, MI50, MI210, RTX PRO 6000 and Mac Studio

On 2026-08-24/25 danielbitpro put the A100 40 GB at about $4,250 and V100s at $700 to $800 or more, Morrowmake the RTX 3090 at about $1k, CUTE the MI50 32 GB at 700 EUR with the 500 EUR eBay supply drying up, and Matej the V100 PCIe still under 500 EUR. On 2026-08-27 to 08-30 the Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256 GB was $10,799 in the US, 12,429 EUR in the EU, 85,000 HKD (about $10,850) and $9,890 with education pricing; quark2world calculated that at $2.5k per 64 GB card the Mac matches the CMP on GB per dollar. AMD MI210 64 GB cards appeared on r/homelabsales at about 4k EUR. gpulover quoted Korea at $30,000 for an A100 80 GB and $20,000 for an RTX PRO 6000, and bayley_w put US A100s at about $11k and an 8x A100 80 GB SXM4 machine with 1 TB RAM at about $60k. RTX PRO 6000s had been about $8k and $6,800 earlier, 3090s sold for about $1,000 to $1,400, and the A100 Drive SXM3 32 GB was once $1,200. machinezero expected many A100s and H100s to reach the market within 18 months.

Reported
Source: @danielbitpro, 2026-08-24
Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-08-25
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-08-25
Source: @matej87, 2026-08-25
Source: @machinezer0, 2026-08-27
Source: @mfj4, 2026-08-27
Source: @quark2world, 2026-08-28
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-08-28
Source: @jecquas, 2026-08-28
Source: @artistosu, 2026-08-29
Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-29

What a multi-card build costs: about $7k to $8k for four cards

• Sojun (2026-08-26): 256 GB of VRAM from 4 waterblocked cards on an EPYC board with 128 GB+ RAM could still be built for about $7k. Source: @sojun80, 2026-08-26
• quark2world: at least $7,200 for 4 cards at that week's prices, plus $800 to $1,000 for water blocks, $1.5k to $2k for EPYC, board and 256 GB RAM, plus case, radiators and fans. On 2026-09-01 he put a proper watercooled custom system with 128 GB HBM on 2x CMP at about 7k and 100+ hours of work, against 6k for a DGX Spark with 128 GB unified memory and a 200G NIC; most of the extra cost is watercooling with used parts and waterblocks from China. His own inference machine took 80+ hours and 3k to 4k in hardware with cards bought at about 500 each, and re-sourcing it would exceed 7k. At 0.28 EUR/kWh (partly offset by solar) beating vast.ai rental would take years, and at 2,000 per card renting makes more sense. Source: @quark2world, 2026-08-26
• DeeJay: eBay prices put cards closer to $2k each after tax. Source: @deejay9983, 2026-08-26

Contested 8 GB

Budget fallbacks at $2k+ prices: V100 SXM2 in fours, P100s, Radeon Pro V340

On 2026-08-30 LT, unable to find a 170HX at an acceptable price and returning an R9700, considered a PCIe V100 at about 350 GBP on AliExpress or Alibaba against 500 GBP on eBay UK. Rickcal said SXM 32 GB V100s cost $350 to $400 in the US. chris.via.egnatia said 350 GBP only makes sense for the 16 GB card and that for NVLink you should buy SXM2 in a set of 4 rather than 2; Miséricorde suggested US buyers look for assembled 8x V100 SXM nodes. CheChu (2026-09-04) planned two V100 32 GB cards instead of paying 2,500+, noting their older CUDA support and lower bandwidth than the CMP. On 2026-09-04/05 segmond said P100 16 GB cards were under $80 on eBay with free shipping, so 8 give 128 GB of VRAM for $640, enough for DeepSeek V4 and Qwen 3.8 Flash, with a full 128 GB system for $1,500 or less; insomniac noted power draw as the downside. SkirtChaser pointed to Radeon Pro V340 dual 16 GB (2x 8 GB) cards sold at about $50 on eBay by Core 4 Solutions / Rhino Group.

Reported
Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-08-30
Source: @chris.via.egnatia, 2026-08-30
Source: @rrickk420, 2026-08-30
Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-08-30
Source: @chechu10, 2026-09-04
Source: @segmond, 2026-09-05
Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-09-05
Source: @ins_mniac, 2026-09-05

At $2k+ per card: Mac Studio M5, V100, MI50, NEC Vector Engine

CUTE (2026-09-02) considered selling 10 CMPs for two 512 GB Mac Studio M5 (about 17k each expected), but only if they could run 8 GLM 5.3 agents at decent speed and prefill; tony and CUTE expect CMP prefill to be better, and CUTE considers MLX well behind CUDA (giaki3003 disagrees). insomniac sees CMPs as good value at about 1k but poor at 2k+. CUTE listed cheaper paths: the NEC Vector Engine 48 GB HBM2 at about 600 EUR, 2x V100 32 GB, or MI50s. DaLZy: the Vector Engine has little compute and poor datatype support (likely under 150 t/s prefill on a 27B), and can be had on Xianyu for 580 RMB. A 4-die card on eBay (Rickcal's "the new CMP") has about 200 GB/s per die and about 2k CUDA cores per Matej, good only for small models.

Reported
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-09-02
Source: @tony_smartecom, 2026-09-02
Source: @giaki3003, 2026-09-02
Source: @ins_mniac, 2026-09-02
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-02
Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-02
Source: @matej87, 2026-09-03

September: alternatives as CMP prices rose

kellertreppe123 (2026-09-12) calculated that 8 MI50s were now cheaper per tok/s per EUR than 4 CMPs for GLM Flash; DaLZy objected that the MI50 has no tensor cores and costs as much as a V100 32 GB; Schaka said ROCm 10 brings no big gain over 7.14. legitsplit saw V100s at $550 on Alibaba; Napsterae noted the "v100 skinny" repo converts NVFP4 to 16-bit in lazy mode at good speeds. Rickcal: V100s are a pain with baseboards and PCIe and draw a lot of power in 4x and 8x configurations, while the 170HX is nearly plug and play at 150 W. RTX 3090s were about $1,100 to 1,300 from China (Arcanum), about $1,250 eBay average (LT), and 750 to 1,300 EUR over two months (kellertreppe123, who also saw used RTX 5090s at 4k to 6k).

Reported
Source: @kellertreppe123, 2026-09-12
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-12
Source: @schakaqt, 2026-09-12
Source: @legitsplit, 2026-09-14
Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-09-14
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-09-14
Source: @napsterae, 2026-09-16
Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-16

July to September: V100, P100, 2080 Ti 22 GB, A4500 and A30

• 2026-07-27: Jeremy (Ends) put a 170HX at $1,200 at about $18 per GB against about $15 for a 2080 Ti 22 GB, which keeps CUDA support a generation longer; Samuel Hayden said aftermarket 3080 20 GB cards are competitive. On 2026-07-29 Jeremy noted DDR5 ECC RDIMM at about $10 per GB with up to about 1,600 GB/s on a modern CPU and board, and Fats replied to price that platform in 170HXs. Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-07-27
  Source: @samuel_hayden., 2026-07-27
  Source: @c.03937, 2026-07-29
• 2026-08-05: Bart had bought an 8x V100 32 GB NVLink server in Canada for $5,500 before learning of the 170HX and would now choose the 170HX for its density. programmerboi said 6x SXM servers listed under $2k are probably fake while $5,500 is normal; arnold civardagezen put a single V100 32 GB SXM2 at $500 to 600 and noted the 170HX cannot give a single 192 GB NVLink pool. Source: @programmerboi, 2026-08-05
  Source: @justbendev, 2026-08-05
  Source: @a.civardagezen, 2026-08-05
• 2026-09-13: roboalchemist called a 32 GB V100 at about $640 on eBay the best value, Samuel Hayden cited 7 A4500s for $7k (140 GB), segmond P100s at $80 (160 GB for $800), and You Know Who preferred MI50 or V620 cards. Source: @squishysquare, 2026-09-13
  Source: @samuel_hayden., 2026-09-13
  Source: @segmond, 2026-09-13
  Source: @roboalchemist., 2026-09-13
• 2026-09-22: segmond put a 16 GB P100 at about $100 and advised getting enough VRAM to run Qwen 3.8 Flash comfortably. Morrowmake was quoted $7k for a whole 8x V100 32 GB SXM2 machine and, with a 3090 at $1,500, called $2,300 for a 170HX reasonable. Source: @segmond, 2026-09-22
  Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-22
• 2026-09-24 to 09-26: Morrowmake said a budget rig today could be 8x RTX 2080 Ti 22 GB; Miséricorde suggested the Titan RTX (same price or cheaper; Jeremy: about $50 more in the US); regaly cited the A30 from $2,500 on eBay. Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-09-24
  Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-24
  Source: @reggie7756, 2026-09-26

Reported

Market context: DDR5 spot price up about 808 percent; RTX PRO 6000 MSRP doubled

Jeremy (Ends) (2026-08-13) shared a Tom's Hardware report that NVIDIA doubled the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96 GB) MSRP to $16,000 after pre-orders below $8,000 the year before; Danske noted that equals 16 CMP 170HX at the time. days (2026-09-18/20) posted a DDR5 16G DRAM spot-price tracker: $6.167 on 2025-08-01 to $56.000 on 2026-09-18 (an all-time high), +808.06 percent. Rickcal noted Intel's CEO forecasting a RAM shortage until 2028. Context for why high-VRAM cards kept rising.

Reported
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-13
Source: @danske1, 2026-08-13
Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-18
Source: @lrdimm, 2026-09-20

V100

The alternative raised most often: Volta with 16 or 32 GB of HBM2, sold as PCIe cards or as SXM2 modules that need an adapter or an NVLink baseboard.

V100 32 GB prices fell in late July 2026

poningru (2026-07-29): 32 GB V100s sold for about $599 without heatsink two weeks earlier and were about $395 with heatsink by then; he bought one for $350 and advised selling 32 GB V100s. machinezero got a box of 12x V100 32 GB from Core4 (aka Rhino Tech), negotiating below the $395 listing, and said there are not enough 170HX cards to move other GPU prices; poningru agreed. Jeremy (Ends) mentioned bulk DDR4 lots on Tradeloop and predictions of a DDR4 price drop. giaki3003 noted the long-term opportunity cost makes V100s hard to justify.

Reported
Source: @machinezer0, 2026-07-23
Source: @giaki3003, 2026-07-23
Source: @roger_dammit, 2026-07-23
Source: @a.civardagezen, 2026-07-23
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-07-23
Source: @poningru, 2026-07-29
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-07-29

SXM2 against SXM3 adapters, and 4x SXM2 baseboards and servers

machinezero (2026-07-29): SXM2-to-PCIe adapters are about $55, while SXM3 adapters cost 4 to 8x that and OEM SXM3 daughter boards are rare. Jeremy (Ends): Chinese 4x V100 SXM2 NVLink (300 GB/s) baseboards exist, but no aftermarket SXM3 NVLink boards do; SXM3 server baseboards use proprietary power and interfaces that need a custom breakout. Arcanum: decommissioned systems are cheaper than those baseboards; he pointed to Fujitsu CX400 M4 blades (PRIMERGY CX2570 M5, 4x 16 GB V100, busbar power) as the cheapest route. Humvee55 saw 4x SXM4-to-PCIe adapters go for $60 in a pricing error.

Reported
Source: @machinezer0, 2026-07-29
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-07-29
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-07-29
Source: @poningru, 2026-07-29
Source: @scallion_9883, 2026-07-29

V100 SXM2 against PCIe: adapters, coolers, and why SXM makes sense in fours or eights

machinezero (2026-07-23) found V100 SXM2 cards from an r/homelabsales reseller at $370 each shipped; roger_dammit: with a $50 PCIe adapter that is $420, still cheaper than about $600 for a PCIe V100 32 GB on eBay. Alibaba quoted $500 to 600+ and Taobao slightly less. SXM2 cards need coolers ($25 to 50 in copper or aluminium; two water-cooled AliExpress options); SXM2/3 is slightly faster than PCIe, and aftermarket boards give 2x and 4x NVLink. Drawbacks: CUDA is capped at 12.9, and vLLM is hard except on 32 GB cards (the 1Cat-vLLM fork targets SM70 with 4x 32 GB; 1CatAI/1Cat-vLLM, linked by aneinander).

Miséricorde (2026-08-30): V100 PCIe does not support NVLink, and SXM V100s only make sense as 4 or 8 on a baseboard (cheap FP16 compute with lots of memory); chris.via.egnatia agreed NVLink cannot be set up on two PCIe cards (bayley_w says two PCIe cards can be bridged 2-way, see below). cspxx bought a V100 32 GB for about $330 and was saving for a 4x PCIe switch. Jeremy (Ends) (2026-08-31): a dual-card SXM2 board runs with one GPU; the board is about $220, a SlimSAS card about $50 from a decommissioned server, two cables about $40 and a 16 GB SXM2 module about $120. cressida (2026-09-16): a V100 32 GB on an SXM2 adapter is about $100 cheaper than a PCIe card, but SXM2 can have coil whine depending on the PSU; Civiloid: go SXM2 on an NVLink baseboard and skip PCIe.

Reported
Source: @machinezer0, 2026-07-23
Source: @roger_dammit, 2026-07-23
Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-08-30
Source: @chris.via.egnatia, 2026-08-30
Source: @cspxx, 2026-08-30
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-31
Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-08-31
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-08-31
Source: @aneinander, 2026-08-31
Source: @cressida1881, 2026-09-16
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-16
Source: @civiloid, 2026-09-16

V100 SXM2 prices and dual-NVLink performance (August)

Price points from 2026-08-07: a V100 16 GB said to be around $100 (poningru) against $200+ (Josephur); a bare V100 SXM about $100 plus a $50 PCIe board gives Gen3 with full compute (ju5t5omedude); 2x SXM2 adapters about $200 to $250; fully converted SXM-to-PCIe V100s about $260 on eBay. replacedriver47 runs dual NVLinked 32 GB V100s at about 35 tok/s on Qwen 3.6 27B without MTP, best with the 1Cat vLLM fork, with up to 15k tok/s prompt processing on huge prompts and a TTFT of a few seconds under 150K context in tensor parallel. llama.cpp gave slightly better decode there but kept reprocessing the entire context at only a few hundred tok/s.

Reported
Source: @poningru, 2026-08-07
Source: @josephur, 2026-08-07
Source: @ju5t5omedude, 2026-08-07
Source: @replacedriver47, 2026-08-07

V100 SXM2 NVLink carriers running beside CMP 170HX servers

cuddylac997 (2026-08-17 to 21) runs a 4x CMP 170HX server and a quad-NVLinked V100 machine (the 4-GPU stack from an old DGX Station V100) that runs with few issues, and added a water-cooled quad 32 GB V100 SXM2 carrier board: 8x V100 32 GB as two 128 GB pools. Jeremy (Ends) pointed to the CATAI vLLM fork for V100s and a partly AI-generated Reddit V100 home-lab write-up (read with care), and warned that the carrier's 8-pin inputs are CPU-type (EPS) 300 W 8-pins. Dabb23 asked about linking two quad ADLINK carriers by NVLink; cuddylac997 runs such carriers (each fed by a 4x 8i link card in an x16 slot), and Dabb23 concluded there is a full mesh within a carrier but no NVLink between carriers short of a dedicated 8-GPU Supermicro server. Petar noted that V100s have few first-generation tensor cores.

Reported
Source: @cuddylac997, 2026-08-17
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-17
Source: @spale777, 2026-08-21
Source: @dabb23_52955_85534, 2026-08-21

64 GB of VRAM: four V100 16 GB, two V100 32 GB or one CMP

PJ (2026-08-26) listed ways to get 64 GB: 4x V100 16 GB, 2x V100 32 GB, or 1x CMP 170HX; 3x 16 GB V100 give 48 GB but cannot run tensor parallel, which needs a power-of-two GPU count. He finds 4-bit quants unreliable and 8-bit trustworthy, and bought his CMPs at about $950 after an eBay V100 order was delayed; irythros agreed small models at Q4 (for example 27B) are poor. xanthe_ (2026-08-31) called V100s the next cheap card now that CMP prices had risen ("party over for cmp"); Jemes said they are stuck at 16 GB, nowhere near the value. On 2026-09-18 Derick2k asked whether V100 32 GB PCIe cards are worth it for a spare-parts test server; LT: allegedly yes on dual NVLink boards, but they need water cooling or a shed. Jeremy (Ends) (2026-09-19): with improved V100 LLM support they now look like viable rental income. _L_ (2026-09-20): a B70, an R9700 or an 8 GB 170HX are still better options than 3090s if you can sell those.

Reported
Source: @zingy90210, 2026-08-26
Source: @irythros, 2026-08-26
Source: @xanthefin, 2026-08-31
Source: @jemes0257, 2026-08-31
Source: @derick2k, 2026-09-18
Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-09-18
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-19
Source: @lia_oc, 2026-09-20

V100 limitations against an Ampere CMP

Lycorascence (2026-08-24/26): the V100 is fine for text generation but lacks CUDA 13 support, cannot use int8convrot, needs fp16 conversions of bf16-only releases (or falls back to fp32), and needs a flash-attention backport; as an HBM datacenter card it idles high, though llama.cpp and kobold.cpp keep it useful. Arcanum: V100s mainly suffer from no bf16, and quad-card baseboards are expensive. Lycorascence added that Ampere sits in a support sweet spot where int8 paths beat fp8 and fp4 on quality, and sees no reason to move off the CMPs until an NVIDIA update breaks them or Ampere is discontinued. Data types on the CMP: Compute, data types and missing features.

Reported
Source: @lycorascence, 2026-08-24
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-08-26

"Old, no current driver support": the V100 next to the 170HX, and 5 of 5 cards unlocked

On 2026-08-20 replacedriver47 found CMP 170HX tensor figures quoted online as either about 48 to 50 TFLOPS or about 200 TFLOPS, against about 120 TFLOPS FP16 tensor for the V100. Lycorascence: the lower number is probably the locked figure and the higher one the unlocked figure; use A100 figures and expect a bit less, because the card is "basically a lower binned a100 with artificial limits". In practice the 170HX runs Krea2 bf16 faster than his V100, which also lacks CUDA 13. Waka324, a V100 owner, cannot recommend one in 2026 because Volta support is terrible. On 2026-10-06, asked why the Tesla V100 is not viable next to the 170HX, Amogh said it is old and no longer has driver support; in the same exchange dkpoulsen reported 5 of 5 of his 170HX cards working with the unlock, against a newcomer's impression that the experience is bad.

Reported
Source: @replacedriver47, 2026-08-20
Source: @lycorascence, 2026-08-20
Source: @cmdrwaka324, 2026-08-20
Source: @prefix10k, 2026-10-06
Source: @_j3ns, 2026-10-06
Source: @dkpoulsen, 2026-10-06

The 170HX against the V100 32 GB: 2 to 2.5 times the price, faster than two V100s

On 2026-08-17 machinezero said he would run a 27B model on a V100 32 GB at about $600 rather than buy a 170HX at current prices. On 2026-08-20 days asked whether one 170HX costs as much as two V100s. Arcanum said V100 32 GB prices had come down a little on Taobao and Goofish, putting the 170HX at about 2.2 to 2.5 times a V100 (under 2x the week before); Adust said US eBay was about 2x, or a bit less with a CMP at $1,200. On VRAM one 170HX equals two V100 32 GB, and Arcanum said nothing else is close. Asked whether pipeline-parallel CMPs or tensor-parallel V100s are the better way to fit GLM 5.2, he said one 170HX outperforms two V100s; for more total VRAM it depends on how much the workload relies on P2P traffic, and he would pick the CMP partly because a large V100 rig draws so much power.

Reported
Source: @machinezer0, 2026-08-17
Source: @lrdimm, 2026-08-20
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-08-20
Source: @adusts, 2026-08-20
Source: @zingy90210, 2026-08-20

The V100 32 GB against the 170HX: about 2x cheaper per unit of performance, with trade-offs

• bayley_w (2026-09-01): among 32 GB cards the V100 is the clear choice: AI-assisted kernels put its MFU near Ampere, and it has tensor cores for prefill, unlike the MI50. Against the 170HX it is about 2x cheaper per unit of compute, bandwidth or capacity at current prices, but gives up bf16, has a worse SM layout (no async copy, half the shared memory), poor Triton support, and needs twice the cards. He published bayley/glm5-on-v100 (GLM-5, 5.1 and 5.2 on many V100s). Volta's comeback seemed over once the 170HX arrived, but with no 170HX supply the V100 is probably still the cheapest way to run the big models at home. Two PCIe V100s can be NVLinked for tensor parallel, but only 2-way; the only 4-way bridge comes from the DGX Station. Source: @bayley_w, 2026-09-01
• replacedriver47 (two 32 GB V100 SXM2) said they are not really worth it next to his CMPs. Source: @replacedriver47, 2026-09-01

Contested

A 4x V100 32 GB SXM2 build: cost breakdown

Jeremy (Ends) (2026-08-31) costed a 4x V100 32 GB SXM2 build: baseboard $500 to 700, coolers $50 to 100 each, cards about $600 each, a 4-port Broadcom SlimSAS switch about $150 (10-port about $500), cables about $20 each, PSU and breakout about $300 used or $400 new ATX, plus about $400 of water cooling. Total: about $3,700 to 3,800 for 128 GB at 3,600 GB/s. A single card may or may not work on a 4-card baseboard (3 definitely will not), and 16 and 32 GB cards can be mixed. V100s can dequant to Q8 or Q4 at about 15 percent overhead and have flash attention, but no tensor-core prefill advantage.

Reported
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-31
Source: @dino_38975, 2026-08-31

8x V100 SXM2 sleds, Redstone carriers, and A100 against H20 pricing

bayley_w (2026-09-01) pointed to eBay head boards that power Redstone and Redstone-Next 4x SXM4/SXM5 carriers (the DGX Station A100 used one) and to "budget DGX-1.5" listings. Petri Krohn identified the HPE XL270d Gen10 / Apollo Gen10 (8x SXM2, dual LGA3647; about EUR 815.14 plus VAT in Europe) and V100 16 GB SXM2 modules at about $150 each, and noted the A100 80 GB at about $12,000 on eBay against a 96 GB H20 at about $11,000. Jeremy (Ends): nothing comes close to $1,000 for an 8x V100 baseboard (about $1,500 with midplane), and its proprietary PSUs are cheap (buy spares). Matej noted the V100 16 GB has twice the memory bandwidth of a T10 16 GB.

Reported
Source: @bayley_w, 2026-09-01
Source: @petrikrohn_26497, 2026-09-01
Source: @matej87, 2026-09-02
Source: @meromgreen, 2026-09-02
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-02

DGX-1, V100 SXM2 and Gaudi 2 server prices in China (September)

SXM2 baseboards are mostly 4-GPU (4x V100 = 128 GB with 32 GB cards), and DGX servers hold 8 (2026-09-19). Miséricorde quoted China prices: a DGX-1 with dual LGA2011-3 v4 Xeons and eight NVLinked 16 GB V100s about 15,000 to 16,000 yuan (about $2.3k to 2.4k); with 32 GB V100s 38,000 to 42,000 yuan; a 16x 32 GB box goes for 70,000 to 80,000 yuan (about $11k to 13k) on Goofish. An 8x Gaudi 2 server with 1 to 2 TB DDR4 is about 30k (DaLZy: 14k barebones), and _L_ says Gaudi is hell to work with and not worth it.

Reported
Source: @c133, 2026-09-19
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-19
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-19
Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-09-19
Source: @lia_oc, 2026-09-19

A cheaper 4x V100 SXM2 baseboard with x8 per card (unverified)

Jeremy (Ends) (2026-09-20) pointed to a newer, much cheaper 4-GPU V100 baseboard (linked post) that runs 8 PCIe lanes to each card, aggregated by a PCIe 4.0 PLX card that combines 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes into a PCIe 4.0 x16. He could not tell whether the photo showed the real board or a render and said it might be a scam: buy the version with components populated. _L_: add the cost of the PEX/PLX card; the board supports NVLink. Switch cards: PCIe switch boards (PEX88096, PEX88064, PEX8747, PLX8749).

Theory
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-20
Source: @derick2k, 2026-09-20
Source: @lia_oc, 2026-09-20

V100 SXM2 32 GB in October: four cards plus an NVLink board give 128 GB for about 3k EUR

kellertreppe123 (2026-10-24): $1,450 for two V100s against $3,600 for one CMP; 4x V100 32 GB plus an NVLink board gives 128 GB for about 3k EUR, though the 200 W CMP still wins on power. For batch and queue workloads that are not time critical the V100s make sense, and one small V100 covers local automation (email routing) at a fifth of a CMP's price. Sourcing: Shenzhen Creative Technology or alifond for cards (alifond also sells the SXM NVLink board); PCIe x16 to 2x SlimSAS 8i adapters cost the same in the US and EU; Huateng's sheet lists the V100 32 GB PCIe at $725 and the 32 GB SXM2 module at $845. He ordered the 32 GB SXM2 variant; legitsplit went PCIe for lower idle and says they were $600 not long ago; Manicraft1001 only sees scam ads or $2k+ for 32 GB V100s (kellertreppe123: buy from China). _L_: the V100 32 GB SXM is the next best value after the A100 SXM4, but four only reach 128 GB. Other used pro-GPU inflation: RTX A2000 12 GB $800 (Lenxtroz), A2 16 GB 400 EUR and T10 250 EUR in the EU (CUTE). Earlier, clee (2026-09-19) noted SXM2 baseboards are mostly 4-GPU and DGX servers hold 8.

Reported 8 GB and 10 GB
Source: @c133, 2026-09-19
Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-09-19
Source: @lenxtroz, 2026-10-15
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-10-15
Source: @lia_oc, 2026-10-23
Source: @kellertreppe123, 2026-10-24
Source: @legitsplit, 2026-10-24
Source: @zingy90210, 2026-10-24
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-10-24
Source: @manicraft1001, 2026-10-24

A100 and other SXM modules

A100 prices as the reference point (mid-August)

On 2026-08-18/19 giaki3003 put the A100 40 GB at about 3,900 EUR retail in his country and about $3k in bulk lots. It is about 30% faster than a 170HX with NVLink, full PCIe and no mods, had halved in price over the past year, and would halve again with datacentre dumps. The A100 80 GB was quoted at $30,000 in Korea (gpulover), $21.5k (Danske) and about 20k in the EU (giaki3003). Studebaker shared news that CoreWeave is renting A100s through 2029, and quark2world noted that support is not a warranty and spares come from the same market.

Reported
Source: @_studebaker_, 2026-08-18
Source: @quark2world, 2026-08-18
Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-08-19
Source: @giaki3003, 2026-08-19
Source: @artistosu, 2026-08-19
Source: @danske1, 2026-08-19

Datacentre repair costs (about 600 EUR in the EU) and used A100 NVL8 servers (about 40k EUR)

quark2world (2026-09-03): a proper repair of datacentre cards such as A100s in the EU starts at about 600 EUR, possibly cheaper in Asia, so repairing a CMP of unknown provenance adds risk and cost. Used A100 NVL8 servers with 1 TB of system memory go for about 40k EUR. DeeJay worked that out to about $6,250 per A100 and would rather buy those than CMPs at current prices; insomniac noted that 16 CMPs at $2.5k eBay prices cost about the same.

Reported
Source: @quark2world, 2026-09-03
Source: @ins_mniac, 2026-09-03
Source: @deejay9983, 2026-09-03

An A100 SXM4 with a PCIe converter against the 170HX, and V100 PCIe cards

• programmerboi (2026-09-06): an A100 SXM4 with a PCIe converter then cost almost as much as a 170HX, at least for 40 GB, with 330 against about 240 TFLOPS dense BF16. A V100 PCIe 16 GB gives 112 TFLOPS FP16 (FP32 accumulate) and 900 GB/s (about 760 practical), the 170HX about 220 TFLOPS and 1.7 TB/s (about 1.4 practical), but the 170HX costs about $2k against about $200 for a V100, and his 4x V100 server was $1.2k. The 170HX has no FP8 (INT8 is not the same), though most users run W4A16 anyway. Source: @programmerboi, 2026-09-06
• gym: 80 GB A100s are still far pricier; he measured about 270 TFLOPS in practice on converted A100 80 GB cards. Source: @jimtjames, 2026-09-06
• DaLZy: the V100 lacks datatype and software support. Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-06

Contested

A100 and RTX 6000 reference prices (September)

For comparison on 2026-09-09: A100 PCIe listings on eBay above $15k (greencandle), though DaLZy and quark2world said few sell at that; SXM A100s listed at $8.3k (Takka); 4x A100 40 GB on what quark2world thought was a DGX Station baseboard for $9.5k, about $2,000 per card (DaLZy); 8x SXM HGX servers selling for 40k to 50k; the A100 40 GB at about 3k to 3.5k. Takka showed A100 rental prices rising, Josh said the RTX 6000 Pro went from $7k to $16k in a year, and greencandle linked a report of CoreWeave renting A100s through 2029.

Reported
Source: @greencandle9753, 2026-09-09
Source: @quark2world, 2026-09-09
Source: @spectakkular, 2026-09-09
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-09
Source: @_____josh_____, 2026-09-09

Value against the A100 40 GB and the DGX Spark

• quark2world (2026-09-12): 500 EUR more buys an A100 40 GB. Derick2k has a local seller with about 70 of them at $3,800 each. quark2world later linked a GPU price and performance table (digitalspaceport.com/local-ai-gpu-price-and-performance) and said the R9700 is similar in VRAM cost. Source: @quark2world, 2026-09-12
  Source: @derick2k, 2026-09-12
• Morrowmake (2026-09-13): two 170HXs cost about the same as a DGX Spark with the same total memory. Limited to pipeline parallelism, their bandwidth advantage matters little, 6 to 8 Sparks beat any number of 170HXs on effective bandwidth, and the cards made sense at 30 to 50% under current prices and will again only if PCIe 4 or NVLink is unlocked. On 2026-09-17 he framed the tiers as RTX 3090 about $1,200 for 24 GB, 170HX about $2,200 for 64 GB, A100 40 GB $3,000 to 4,000 (SXM or PCIe), and 8x 170HX about $16k plus about $5k for a platform. Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-13
  Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-17
• CUTE (2026-09-15): an A100 40G is at 3.5k. HumanDrone8721 noted the Spark had just been discontinued. Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-09-15
  Source: @humandrone8721_60165, 2026-09-16
• On 2026-09-29 quark2world posted eBay sold data showing A100 40 GB prices falling, and noted a 4x SXM A100 baseboard sold for about $2.8k. mrpandagod: add $500 to 600 for an SXM4-to-PCIe base board, so about $3k for an A100 40 GB at PCIe 4.0 against $2,000 to 2,100 for a CMP 170HX ("a100 40gb pcie 2.0"); Gen4 adds little without NVLink. Source: @quark2world, 2026-09-29
  Source: @djpandaman, 2026-09-29
• Josh asked how much discount the 170HX needs for "their much higher failure rates" (see Card failure rates and longevity). Source: @_____josh_____, 2026-09-29
• NikhilR (2026-10-03) called a $1,900 A100 40 GB a steal, but his $1,200 64 GB CMP still beats it, and 80 GB A100 prices are not falling. Source: @nikhilr1696, 2026-10-03

Contested 8 GB and 10 GB

A100 SXM4 40 GB now costs less than an 8 GB 170HX, but needs an adapter board and a 48 V PSU

programmerboi made the conversion comparison first, on 2026-09-06 (above), and on 2026-09-29 mrpandagod put the SXM4-to-PCIe base board at $500 to 600. On 2026-10-07 DeeJay saw 40 GB A100s on eBay at $3,500, making more CMPs hard to justify; quark2world prefers original A100s at these prices.

In mid-October DaLZy said the SXM4 A100 lists around $2.5k but needs an adapter board and a 48 V PSU (Arcanum). programmerboi: an SXM4 A100 is about $2,300 in the US plus $620 for a bought conversion, or about $350 per unit to make in small batches; 4-way SXM NVLink boards are about $600 on Alibaba and $750 on eBay; rewired HGX baseboards give NVLink at 300 GB/s unidirectional. Converted SXM4 cards still draw 400 W (Miséricorde, programmerboi), and SXM allows tower heatsinks. Arcanum: NVIDIA SXM4 test boards are about $300 and a bare pin breakout under $100. Xeax: an SXM4 A100 40 GB is cheaper but needs an adapter.

Late October: kellertreppe123 saw last sales of 40 GB A100s in Germany near $6k, China offers at $4.5k, and an SXM module at $3.3k plus a $500 board; later a 40 GB SXM4 at 2.8k EUR, less than a CMP. intervitens: 40 GB SXM4 on eBay at $2.5k. _L_: an A100 SXM4 40 GB at about £2.4k is cheaper than an 8 GB 170HX but has 24 GB less VRAM and is harder to run. Price watch: mrpandagod tracked the cheapest working eBay A100 PCIe sale (2026-10-13); the A100 80 GB SXM4 was around 6k EUR ex-VAT (about 7k with VAT) from bargainhardware.eu, where Gitanos says 12k is the minimum elsewhere; a configured ZT Systems 2660 6U server was 52k EUR with no support (Sojun); Jeremy (Ends) names AIS on the US west coast as a major refurbisher.

Reported 8 GB and 10 GB
Source: @programmerboi, 2026-09-06
Source: @jimtjames, 2026-09-06
Source: @djpandaman, 2026-09-29
Source: @deejay9983, 2026-10-07
Source: @quark2world, 2026-10-07
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-10-13
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-10-13
Source: @djpandaman, 2026-10-13
Source: @programmerboi, 2026-10-13
Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-13
Source: @xeax, 2026-10-17
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-10-23
Source: @kellertreppe123, 2026-10-23
Source: @intervitens, 2026-10-23
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-10-23
Source: @gitanos, 2026-10-23
Source: @sojun80, 2026-10-23
Source: @lia_oc, 2026-10-23

Chinese "Custom Tesla A100 SXM-PCIe" cards on eBay: adapter board or reball

eBay listings sell "Custom Tesla A100 SXM-PCIe GPU 40GB/80GB" cards whose Q&A states the converted version does not support NVLink.

• Petri Krohn disagrees on the method: the Chinese boards remove the GA100 from the SXM module, reball it and solder it onto a factory-new A100 PCB and case. That PCB is the same as the 170HX and A100 PCIe board, so it should carry the NVLink connectors; the only tell is the device ID, and the HBM2 stacks move with the package. Source: @petrikrohn_26497, 2026-10-08
• _L_: SXM-to-PCIe converter boards have existed for a long time (SXM2 V100, SXM4, newer SXM5), servers such as the Gigabyte G492-ZD2 take 8x SXM4 natively, and SXM4-to-PCIe is a downgrade not much cheaper than a retail A100, even on Xianyu. Source: @lia_oc, 2026-10-08
• mrpandagod: a 40 GB SXM4 module is about $2,500 and a PCIe-to-SXM4 board $800 to 1,000, against $4k to 6k for a normal A100 40 GB PCIe with NVLink, which shows what NVLink is worth. Source: @djpandaman, 2026-10-08
  Source: @con3po7016, 2026-10-08

Contested

SXM2 A100 automotive (DRIVE A100) modules: about EUR 1.2k, 32 GB and 64 GB

AronneK336 (2026-07-19) showed a DRIVE A100 he used to own, adapted to PCIe; it is SXM2, not SXM4, because the DRIVE A100 was a drop-in replacement for the V100. arnold civardagezen mentioned Chinese SXM2 backplanes as a carrier option; Luna recalled seeing one for $300. CUTE (2026-08-18) said he can get NVIDIA DRIVE A100 modules (SXM) for about 1.2k euros in 32 GB and 64 GB versions and asked whether they can be unlocked; days wondered whether the DRIVE A100 has only 32 GB of physical HBM (open question). Jeremy (Ends) (2026-10-27): the 300 W SXM2 A100 module from a self-driving platform is the highest-TDP A100 variant, and the modules are now on the used market; earlier talk said they might work in DGX-1 systems, but nobody has tried. Related silicon: 32 GB cards (subsystem 10de:1586).

Reported
Source: @aronnek336, 2026-07-19
Source: @_j3ns, 2026-07-19
Source: @a.civardagezen, 2026-07-19
Source: @lunaroseoc, 2026-07-19
Source: @lrdimm, 2026-08-18
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-08-18
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-10-27

PG199 price history

In the PG199 channel (PG199 is the DRIVE A100 board), Bart (2026-08-29) asked what the incentive is to use the card, since it was already "highly" priced. bayley_w recalled a US-based seller once had a few crates of them at $999 each; Wayz said they were cheap the previous year and he bought a new one at $1,200.

Reported
Source: @justbendev, 2026-08-29
Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-29
Source: @wayz2u, 2026-08-30

Side project: reverse-engineering SXM2, SXM4 and SXM5 baseboard pinouts

programmerboi (2026-10-18) supplies hardware to a project reverse-engineering SXM2/SXM4/SXM5 pinouts for custom baseboards, with an NVIDIA development PCIe-to-SXM adapter as ground truth. DaLZy: A100 modules only need 48 V (on-module Vicor converters do the rest), MCIO could carry the PCIe link, and 1Cat already has an SXM4 board laid out (fabrication status unknown). Jeremy (Ends): nobody is known to have powered an A100 SXM baseboard from a CRPS PSU, custom power pinouts may be booby-trapped, and A100 SXM boards are around $2.5k now. Earlier history: programmerboi's SXM4 interest began on 2026-08-02 with the idea of moving 170HX cores and HBM onto an SXM4 board; DaLZy linked a bilibili post on a new SXM4-to-PCIe adapter board for the A100 the same day, and said on 2026-09-17 that third-party SXM4 adapters were still work in progress while SXM2-to-PCIe adapters (about $50) exist. quark2world (2026-07-23) pointed to regsky_, who offers SXM-to-PCIe reballing as a service. Not CMP-specific; relevant when weighing alternatives.

Theory
Source: @quark2world, 2026-07-23
Source: @scallion_9883, 2026-07-29
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-08-02
Source: @programmerboi, 2026-08-02
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-17
Source: @programmerboi, 2026-10-18
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-10-18
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-10-18

Consumer and workstation NVIDIA cards

20 GB RTX 3080 and 48 GB RTX 3090 mods; a 3080 20 GB at $687 against a 2080 Ti 22 GB at $429

roboalchemist (2026-08-31): an RTX 3080 (10 or 12 GB) has about the same compute cores as a 3090 for about $300 to 350, and 20 GB modded 3080s cost $600 to 700; he planned a full set of those before finding the CMP 170HX. h2x: the 20 GB mod uses a different PCB with 20x 1 GB GDDR6X on both sides, and 1 GB GDDR6X is now very cheap because of the flood of CMP 90HX cards; he prefers the 48 GB 3090 mod with 2 GB modules. replacedriver47 warned that the 3080 20 GB does not support P2P or NVLink. legitsplit saw an RTX 3080 20 GB at $687 against a 2080 Ti 22 GB at $429 (2026-09-19). Jeremy (Ends): Ampere has FlashAttention 2 and BF16 and by his estimate about 35 months of CUDA support left against about 19 for Turing, and two 2080 Ti 22 GB with NVLink do about 30 tok/s on 27B-class models with pipeline parallel (he would buy that pair for about $1,000).

Reported
Source: @roboalchemist., 2026-08-31
Source: @v1rm, 2026-08-31
Source: @replacedriver47, 2026-08-31
Source: @legitsplit, 2026-09-19
Source: @cibernox, 2026-09-19
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-20

Replacing RTX Pro 4000s or 4090s with 170HXs: VRAM per dollar

• Dc (2026-09-14) is replacing RTX Pro 4000s with 170HXs, going from 96 GB to 256 GB of total VRAM. Source: @daveedcoles, 2026-09-14
• Rickcal had considered RTX Pro 4000s when they cost as much as RTX 3090s, but got 170HXs for a similar price instead. Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-14
• quark2world: it depends on the use case. For him 4090s would be much faster, and some streaming from system RAM costs less than the older architecture's lower IPC. Source: @quark2world, 2026-09-15
• cibernox: the extra VRAM is worth more, because compute is rarely the bottleneck and the CMP is not much slower. Source: @cibernox, 2026-09-15

Contested

AMD

MI50 for budget LLMs: decode acceptable, prefill too slow for agentic use

SkirtChaser (2026-07-20/21): the MI50 32 GB at about $400 to 500 has roughly 25 to 35 percent of a 170HX's prefill and acceptable decode, and is fine for anything loaded at Q4 or above. MI50 32 GB prices did not rise with the 170HX; several people were selling them and prices were dropping (Merom Green, CUTE). Aeiou (2026-08-13): an MI50 (Windows, LM Studio, 27B dense) started at about 100 tok/s prefill and settled at about 40 past 20k context, and Vulkan in LM Studio now crashes on model load; a 27B dense model at 128k context took about 40 minutes to process a long context, an A3B MoE about 20. Fine for chat once warm but painful for agentic and tool use, with Vulkan and ROCm about equal on the card; she said a V100 ($700) would have been a better buy and the 170HX is the better option now. fallengod9962 judged the 170HX far ahead on cost and performance. Schaka noted AMD's TheRock project (ROCm 7.14 / 10.x) restoring support down to Vega; aaron pointed to the gfx906 Discord for MI50 tuning.

Reported
Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-07-21
Source: @meromgreen, 2026-07-22
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-07-22
Source: @fallengod9962, 2026-08-13
Source: @91d5a66bffc978331fac75b68fa86aba, 2026-08-13
Source: @friendsxxii, 2026-08-13
Source: @schakaqt, 2026-08-13
Source: @aaron0010, 2026-08-13

MI50 against the 170HX: compute-bound against bandwidth-bound, and a hybrid prefill and decode idea

• programmerboi (2026-08-05) proposed MI50s for decode and a 170HX for prefill, claiming one 170HX equals 8 MI50s in compute while the MI50 is only about 35 percent slower in bandwidth at about 15 percent of the cost. Untested. Source: @programmerboi, 2026-08-05
• CUTE put the compute gap at more like 3 to 4x. Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-08-05
• SkirtChaser benchmarked all quants of granite-4.1-3b on an MI50 with llama.cpp: the card is compute-bottlenecked, so smaller quants (more dequant compute) perform worse relative to Q8 and FP16. Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-08-05

Contested

MI50 against the CMP: ROCm pain against cost

• kellertreppe123 (2026-08-31) asked why anyone would pay 3k for a CMP when an MI50 costs 500 EUR. Source: @kellertreppe123, 2026-08-31
• ST called the MI50 abandonware; 68x said patching old libraries into newer ROCm Docker images wore him out ("I'd rather have fibre glass on my skin than use ROCm again"). Source: @stcord, 2026-08-31
  Source: @68x0, 2026-08-31
• segmond: the MI50 is great if it is all you can afford, can run DeepSeek V4 Flash or Qwen Flash given enough cards, and ROCm was solid for him. Source: @segmond, 2026-08-31
• Dino reposted an unverified claim of 66 to 73 tok/s for Qwen3.6-27B Q8_0 with MTP on 2x MI50 (llama.cpp, split-mode tensor, draft-mtp n-max 3), adding "No idea if this is legit". Source: @dino_38975, 2026-08-31

Contested

MI50 32 GB at $1,000 or 700 EUR; Chinese MI50 listings not delivering (September)

segmond saw MI50 32 GB asking prices of $1,000 (2026-09-09). CUTE said they sell for 700 EUR in the EU because of demand from people going local, and that Chinese MI50 listings do not get delivered and are relisted at higher prices. reala got a 3080 20 GB from Alibaba for 500 EUR all in with no extra taxes. SkirtChaser: Alibaba still has P100, maybe P40, and overpriced V100 stock. Buying advice: Buying from China as a foreigner.

Reported
Source: @segmond, 2026-09-09
Source: @scallion_9883, 2026-09-09
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-09-09
Source: @reala7096, 2026-09-09
Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-09-09

Claim checked: a 16 GB MI50 does not become a 32 GB MI60

• Jeremy (Ends) (2026-09-07) relayed an AI chatbot's claim that all MI50s carry 32 GB of HBM2 and that a strap mod plus an MI60 firmware flash unlocks them like the 170HX, and bought 4 cards. On checking he found the chatbot (Gemini) had conflated the 16 and 32 GB MI50 versions (and VBIOS flashing for Windows on the 32 GB card), and he cancelled his orders. Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-07
  Source: @scallion_9883, 2026-09-07
• orrorin added that his quad MI50 system had terrible prefill at the time. Source: @_orrorin, 2026-09-07

More claims of this kind: Rumours and claims to verify.

Contested

rocm-gfx803: ROCm 10.0 patched for Polaris, vLLM on an RX 570

Schaka (2026-09-03) is patching ROCm 10.0 for Polaris (gfx803) kernel by kernel; the vLLM in Schaka/rocm-gfx803 runs Qwen 3.8 on his RX 570 (Vega not yet fixed), and he asked owners of 8 to 16 Polaris mining cards to test throughput. ju5t5omedude noted that Octominer-bundled Polaris cards are nerfed to PCIe x1 in hardware and software.

Reported
Source: @schakaqt, 2026-09-03
Source: @n2dcrypt, 2026-09-03
Source: @ju5t5omedude, 2026-09-03

7900 XTX against the 3090 for LLMs, from a CMP owner

cibernox (2026-09-30) sold two 7900 XTX cards when he bought CMP 170HXs: solid generation but weak prefill under llama.cpp, and an excellent 4 to 5 W idle. He would still pick a 3090 at a similar price, but not at the 40 to 50 percent premium Sojun quoted ($1,400 against $800 to 900). CUTE noted only 24 GB of VRAM, good with a DDR5 system.

Reported
Source: @sojun80, 2026-09-30
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-09-30
Source: @cibernox, 2026-09-30

AMD R9700 AI PRO 32 GB against the CMP 170HX

LT (2026-08-24) considered an AMD R9700 AI PRO 32 GB at nearly the same price as a 170HX, since it has a warranty and is not a lottery (3090s had risen from about 600 to 900+). secdude, who owns an R9700, said it is not comparable to the 170HX for MoE or memory-bandwidth-bound LLM inference; it wins only on idle power and some small compute use cases.

Reported
Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-08-24
Source: @sec_dude, 2026-08-24

Hygon DCU K100 (64 GB HBM2): no CUDA, China-only drivers

DaLZy (2026-07-24) asked about the Hygon DCU K100, 64 GB HBM2 for about 6,000 to 7,000 RMB on Xianyu (non-AI version about 6,200 RMB). decoy's friend said it is essentially a Vega/MI50 derivative; DaLZy counted about 120 CUs with added matrix units and said it has about half the compute of a 170HX. The driver and SDK sites (developer.sourcefind.cn, developer.hpccube.com, support.hieco.com.cn) appear reachable only from mainland-China IPs. ppc64_ said the later version is basically an MI210 at about 20k RMB. aidoc: skip the K100 and go NVIDIA for CUDA; the 170HX is better.

Reported
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-07-24
Source: @decoy.works, 2026-07-24
Source: @sekkit_75019, 2026-07-24
Source: @ppc64_, 2026-07-24

MI250X and MI250 on OAM-to-PCIe adapters: the driver times out

• July to September 2026: several members tried to run AMD MI250X OAM modules on PCIe through the Chinese A100 OAM adapter or a Supermicro AOM-MCM-Q baseboard. The common result: the card shows up in lspci (only at PCIe 4.0) but the driver times out because the card has not loaded its BIOS into memory; the non-X MI250 has not worked outside its intended system either (SkirtChaser, citing amd/amd-lab-notes discussion 10). The AOM-MCM-Q uses an MCIO 124p connector with an apparently custom pinout, cabled 2x SFF-8654 8i to MCIO 124p, at about 54 V from a Huawei R4850G2 PSU. About 100 MI250X are thought to exist, bought for about $1,250 to 2,500 each. The design is 4 modules (8 logical GPUs) per baseboard needing 128 PCIe lanes (256 for 8 modules), and the part looks configured for xGMI rather than PCIe. jiacheng_liu's company built a passive OAM-to-PCIe adapter from purchased AMD documentation and planned to test an MI250X, but the person who built it had left. gym warned that HPE MI250Xs do not initialise. Arcanum (2026-09-24): 1Cat has a non-locked MI250 system where removing one module from the baseboard made the rest fail enumeration, the same as with an IF bridge on MI210s not fully populated with 4 cards; the MI250X needs a 48 V step-up rail, which Rickcal also noted (2026-08-30). Source: @ashtray9843, 2026-07-19
  Source: @lunaroseoc, 2026-07-19
  Source: @robbbbbb7973, 2026-07-20
  Source: @meatsus, 2026-07-20
  Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-07-20
  Source: @ashtray9843, 2026-07-21
  Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-07-21
  Source: @robbbbbb7973, 2026-07-21
  Source: @jiacheng_liu, 2026-08-15
  Source: @schakaqt, 2026-08-15
  Source: @dino_38975, 2026-08-16
  Source: @jimtjames, 2026-08-23
  Source: @a.civardagezen, 2026-08-24
  Source: @rrickk420, 2026-08-30
  Source: @jiacheng_liu, 2026-08-31
  Source: @djpandaman, 2026-08-31
  Source: @rrickk420, 2026-08-31
  Source: @irythros, 2026-08-31
  Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-08-31
  Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-02
  Source: @ob88594, 2026-09-03
  Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-09-03
  Source: @aaasss1456, 2026-09-04
  Source: @schakaqt, 2026-09-04
  Source: @spectakkular, 2026-09-23
  Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-09-24
  Source: @cressida1881, 2026-09-24
  Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-09-24
• Rickcal (2026-10-09): the card is vendor locked but only needs an HPE BIOS flash and an OAM-to-PCIe adapter; current 1x OAM adapters enumerate as 8x+8x or 2x 16x. OB88594: the OAM adapter cannot provide the inter-card interconnect; Rickcal says he does not need it. He declined an 8x Supermicro Gaudi 2 box for 8k because of 120 V power and workarounds. Arcanum: prices are no longer cheap. Source: @rrickk420, 2026-10-09
  Source: @ob88594, 2026-10-09
  Source: @seriousrising, 2026-10-09
  Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-10-09

Contested

MI250 and MI250X market prices (September)

robbbbbb7973 missed an eBay Supermicro system with 4x MI250 at about $15k to 16k, and single MI250X cards were listed for not much less (2026-09-24). bung saw a single MI250X on eBay for about $4k and said complete Supermicro MI250 systems go for the low $20ks with CPU and memory or the mid teens without; custom OAM adapters were in progress in the launch80 Discord. Takka: the MI250X sold for about $600 a few months earlier (listed at $1.2k, accepting lower offers); the MI250 is unlocked and sold via Supermicro and others, while the MI250X was HPE-exclusive and locked to HPE Cray servers.

Reported
Source: @bung9211, 2026-09-24
Source: @robbbbbb7973, 2026-09-25
Source: @spectakkular, 2026-09-25

Other cheap HBM options: an A100 SXM4 adapter, MI250X on OAM converters

DaLZy (2026-08-02) linked a bilibili post about a new SXM4-to-PCIe adapter board for the A100, interesting if you can find a cheap SXM4 card. Rickcal (2026-08-23): the 170HX is still the cheapest HBM card at $1.5k to 2k, while a 128 GB HBM MI250X at about $2,000 needs an OAM interface and does not yet work on non-OEM boards. programmerboi: a Chinese supplier offered a single-socket OAM-to-PCIe converter for about $600, or a full server for $2k to 3k plus about $2k per GPU, and each MI250 enumerates as 2 GPUs. gym: people who tried HPE MI250Xs found they do not initialise, which is why they are cheap.

Reported
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-08-02
Source: @rrickk420, 2026-08-23
Source: @programmerboi, 2026-08-23
Source: @jimtjames, 2026-08-23

A parked OAM-to-PCIe carrier board project (Hong Kong)

jiacheng_liu (2026-07-21): his Hong Kong company built an OAM carrier board plus ROCm code that "runs very well", starting from a compact "AI Box" concept, but parked it. Certifying the adapter (FCC, UL; EC and CCC described as trivial) would cost about $100K before a US launch, and the open OAM standard leaves no durable moat; it was never stress-tested. Humvee55 asked whether it would also need a custom driver and ROCm kernel.

Reported
Source: @jiacheng_liu, 2026-07-21
Source: @scallion_9883, 2026-07-21

MI210 as the next tier up; an MI100 bridge idea

• DaLZy (2026-09-17): SXM2-to-PCIe adapters (about $50) exist; third-party SXM4 adapters are still work in progress. Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-17
• Takka named the MI210 as the next tier up (4-way interconnect, about $3k to 4k each in the West, realised specs below paper), and said 4x MI100 plus a bridge for just under $5k equals the VRAM of two CMPs with more aggregate FLOPs and bandwidth. He thinks the CMP's real value is BF16 training and BF16 diffusion, supported as a side effect of Ampere vLLM work. Source: @spectakkular, 2026-09-17
• Morrowmake flagged the power draw. Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-17
• insomniac argued an A100 SXM system with NVSwitch costs only about $10k more than a $30k 8x CMP cluster. Source: @ins_mniac, 2026-09-17
• Rickcal countered with 8x 400 W A100 40 GB (320 GB) against 4x CMP at 160 W (256 GB). Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-17

Contested

Intel

Gaudi 2: 96 GB HBM2e modules at about $1.3k to $1.8k; the software stack is the blocker

Gaudi 2 has 96 GB of HBM2e, native FP8 and about 2.5 TB/s per accelerator, 8 per server for 768 GB. Modules sold for about $1,400 to $1,800 (eBay, Goofish; some pulled from new servers); the obstacle is the OAM baseboard. The cheapest full platform cited is the Supermicro SYS-820GH-TNR2 (8x Gaudi 2 OAM, 2x Ice Lake, often engineering samples), seen at auction for under $1,000 to about $1,500 per fully kitted system (about 200 sold), then listed at about $8k to $37k after the news. Power: two cards draw about 1,200 W; 8x idles about 800 W; peak is about 4.8 kW on the accelerators and about 6 kW for the whole server (two 3 kW PSUs). Software: 1CatAI's 1Cat-vLLM-Gaudi and 1cat-vllm-gaudi, 1Cat-vLLM-Intel, and abotsis/gaudi-minimax-h3; a relayed 1Cat update (2026-09-23) reported about 3,000 tok/s prefill with PP2 TP2 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, roughly RTX 5090 performance per Gaudi 2, with a new 1cat-sglang-gaudi aimed at MiniMax H3. The views, in the order first posted:

• intervitens (2026-08-18): several people run single modules on a PCIe adapter. Source: @intervitens, 2026-08-18
• gym, who has run Gaudi 3: good performance is horrendous to get and Gaudi 2 is worse; vllm-gaudi no longer validates new models on Gaudi 2, and the Wiwynn boxes are engineering samples with inconsistent interconnects that often do not come up. He ran GLM 5.2 FP8 on an 8x Gaudi 3 box with vllm-gaudi at under 4 tok/s; the vllm-gaudi GLM 5.2 effort took about nine months to reach 15 tok/s decode (issue 1549), and a university Gaudi 3 box randomly drops devices and needs a reboot. Source: @jimtjames, 2026-08-23
  Source: @jimtjames, 2026-08-25
  Source: @jimtjames, 2026-08-31
  Source: @jimtjames, 2026-09-23
• bayley_w: the cards draw 600 W only at full power and have more compute than a 170HX, but he would not run them outside their original node, doubts Gaudi supports comms over PCIe, and pointed to octal Gaudi 2 Wiwynn nodes (Core4). Gaudi was fine for dense training at 1k to 8k context in 2024; MoE kernels are unknown, and AI coding models that handle CUDA kernels have almost no Gaudi code outside Intel's to learn from. Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-25
  Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-31
  Source: @bayley_w, 2026-09-09
• Arcanum: several people run single modules on an adapter (card about $1.5k, adapter maybe buildable for about $200, with 48 V input). The cards can be power-limited to 150 W, though he was unsure they still do maths there, and RoCE is a "dumpster fire". Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-08-25
  Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-09-23
  Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-09-25
• DeeJay (2026-08-31): Gaudi cards on eBay cost less than a 170HX with almost double the bandwidth. Source: @deejay9983, 2026-08-31
• Rickcal: nearly impossible to set up, and 600 W against 150 W for the 170HX; mid, and not worth it over a CMP or an MI250X unless you have a 240 V wall. Source: @rrickk420, 2026-08-31
  Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-21
  Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-23
  Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-23
• Miséricorde: people cannot run anything reliably on Gaudi 2 yet. Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-09-09
  Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-09-20
  Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-16
• ob88594: no confirmed reports of a single module activating on a PCIe adapter. Source: @ob88594, 2026-09-15
  Source: @ob88594, 2026-09-15
  Source: @ob88594, 2026-09-15
  Source: @ob88594, 2026-09-21
• xtj7: about 350 W is the minimum stable power cap. Source: @xtj7, 2026-09-15
  Source: @xtj7, 2026-09-21
• PJ: an 8x barebones server is about $14k, about $25,200 for 768 GB in all. On 2026-10-17 he reported a Gaudi 2 OAM-to-PCIe adapter up and running and suggested several OAM cards as cheap VRAM. Source: @zingy90210, 2026-09-20
  Source: @zingy90210, 2026-09-23
  Source: @zingy90210, 2026-09-25
  Source: @zingy90210, 2026-10-17
• cressida posted a photo of one Gaudi running Qwen, and on 2026-09-23 a side-by-side: CMP 170HX 64 GB at $2,500 to $2,700, idle 35 to 40 W, peak about 200 W, 15 to 20 percent above a 3090, proven unlock and CUDA; Gaudi 2 96 GB at $1,300 to $1,800, idle 80 to 100 W, rated 600 W, an estimated 1.7x the HBM bandwidth and 2.5x the compute of a 3090, early recipes, often new old stock, and a janky OAM-to-PCIe setup. Source: @cressida1881, 2026-09-21
  Source: @cressida1881, 2026-09-23
  Source: @cressida1881, 2026-09-23
• Adust asked which OAM-to-PCIe boards people use, since none are publicly listed (Goofish?). Source: @adusts, 2026-09-22
  Source: @adusts, 2026-09-29
  Source: @adusts, 2026-10-17
• Josh: static graphs add latency. Source: @_____josh_____, 2026-09-23
  Source: @_____josh_____, 2026-09-23
• Humvee55 (2026-10-16) bought 12 Gaudi 2: $6.5k for a Wiwynn base with 8 OAM modules (about 300 lb) and four more at about $1k each to run on OAM-to-PCIe boards. To the doubters he said the same was said of the CMPs six months before the proof of concept. B16_c holds two Gaudi 2 bought in FOMO. Source: @scallion_9883, 2026-09-30
  Source: @scallion_9883, 2026-10-16
  Source: @cmurrayis, 2026-10-16
• atsasin: the complete servers have 24 integrated 100GbE NICs and 6x 400GbE scale-out, which PCIe boards throw away. Source: @atsasin2126, 2026-10-16
• programmerboi: the Gaudi stack is awful and would have to be remade and optimised; the adapter is not the problem, everything after it is, and it will not work by vibe coding. Source: @programmerboi, 2026-10-17

The prices, platform listings, power figures and the relayed 1Cat update above come from the same August to October threads: Source: @lrdimm, 2026-08-23
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-08-25
Source: @lrdimm, 2026-08-25
Source: @irythros, 2026-08-31
Source: @skirtchaser, 2026-09-09
Source: @civiloid, 2026-09-09
Source: @con3po7016, 2026-09-10
Source: @smit1237, 2026-09-15
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-15
Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-20
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-20
Source: @mlx4, 2026-09-21
Source: @spectakkular, 2026-09-21
Source: @ins_mniac, 2026-09-22
Source: @moliminous, 2026-09-23
Source: @djpandaman, 2026-09-23
Source: @bung9211, 2026-09-23
Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-23
Source: @artistosu, 2026-09-23
Source: @seriousrising, 2026-09-25
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-29
Source: @nestaa51, 2026-09-29
Source: @endbr64, 2026-09-29
Source: @cmdrwaka324, 2026-09-30

Contested

OAM-to-PCIe carrier boards and power for Gaudi 2

OAM-to-PCIe carriers exist (a Reddit r/NVIDIA_SXM2PCIE thread). Arcanum and DaLZy say they are NVIDIA test platforms for SXM and OAM modules, never retail, and the Reddit seller responds poorly (Josephur, jonathan), with someone in the launch80 Discord building another adapter. Gaudi 2 needs extra power injection: Intel docs state 54 V DC with 12 V aux, 600 W (Josephur); OAM modules accept 40 to 60 V (DaLZy); the boards use 12 V plus 48 V, and 2.5 to 3 kW 48 V PSUs cost less than a 12-to-48 V adapter (Arcanum), or use 4x 12 V PSUs in series (meatsus). Rickcal drafted a 14-layer OAM 1.1 PCB at about $250 to 300 per board at 100+ quantity, then switched to the MI250X; DaLZy said a single module needs only 8 layers (the 1Cat board is 8-layer).

Reported
Source: @adusts, 2026-09-23
Source: @josephur, 2026-09-23
Source: @jonathan.quai, 2026-09-23
Source: @rrickk420, 2026-09-23
Source: @dalzyyy, 2026-09-23
Source: @meatsus, 2026-09-23
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-09-23

Intel Arc Pro B70 and B60 Dual

Civiloid (2026-08-25): the Maxsun Arc Pro B60 Dual 48G is two B60s on one PCB, each on PCIe Gen5 x8 with 24 GB, so the slot needs x8x8 bifurcation (without it only 24 GB shows up, per Ezy). It only saves space: an ASRock B60 is $650 on Newegg against over $2,000 for the B60 Dual in the US (600 against 2,530 CHF in Switzerland). clee sees about 900 tok/s prefill and 30 tok/s decode at depth 0 with Q4_K_M quants of "qwen3.6-3.8" on a B70, dropping with depth; the software is still rough. Civiloid: without the CMP 170HX he would build with a few B70s, and the R9700 is now cheaper than the B70 at Swiss retailers after B70 prices rose.

Reported
Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-08-25
Source: @c133, 2026-08-25
Source: @civiloid, 2026-08-25
Source: @ezybr0, 2026-08-25
Source: @spale777, 2026-08-25
Source: @civiloid, 2026-08-25
Source: @_studebaker_, 2026-08-25
Source: @ob88594, 2026-08-25

Intel Max 1100

days (2026-08-18) asked about the Intel Max 1100 (HBM2e, about $2,000 new); intervitens called it slow, with cursed software, and overpriced. The general view in chat: Intel GPUs are a hard sell.

Reported
Source: @lrdimm, 2026-08-18
Source: @intervitens, 2026-08-18
Source: @giaki3003, 2026-08-18
Source: @petrikrohn_26497, 2026-08-20
Source: @spale777, 2026-08-21
Source: @beefbonecapone, 2026-08-21

Other accelerators

Huawei Atlas 300I Duo 96G: not a viable CMP alternative

Spec: 96 GB LPDDR4X, 408 GB/s total on paper (2x 204 GB/s, split across two processors that talk over PCIe), 140 TFLOPS FP16, 280 TOPS INT8, 150 W; about $600 to $1,500 on Alibaba. Jeremy (Ends) measured usable memory bandwidth at 200 to 300 GB/s, good for video but marginal for LLM speed (against about 1,500 GB/s for the 170HX); giaki3003 and others said the lack of CUDA (the CANN stack) is the main problem. A Reddit benchmark of Qwen3.6-35B-A3B W8A8 used only half the memory, and another write-up reported abysmal tok/s even after long tuning. formatme said Z.AI uses these cards with SGLang. Civiloid (2026-10-04): an old pre-AI chip with no support for modern native formats; the 96 GB is two 48 GB chips that do not scale linearly, and Takka suspects even the 300 GB/s figure is inflated. Its strength is video codecs (CCTV aggregation boxes); two AGX Xavier 64 GB over PCIe were floated as a cheaper cursed alternative, still Volta-era slow. On US legality, insomniac and Jeremy said the restrictions target corporate use and reselling the cards or their compute, not personal use, citing a Reuters report of 2026-06-26; Capone called it an export and import control measure. Luna rejected it as an inference-only NPU. Nestaa51 (2026-09-29) asked about 4 in tensor parallel for GLM 5.3 full or DSv4.1 Flash; the consensus was to buy more CMPs or, if you can absorb the cost, a Gaudi 2 rack.

Reported
Source: @counterstrikeaimgod, 2026-07-22
Source: @c.03937, 2026-07-22
Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-07-22
Source: @lunaroseoc, 2026-07-22
Source: @moliminous, 2026-08-01
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-08-01
Source: @giaki3003, 2026-08-01
Source: @beefbonecapone, 2026-08-02
Source: @ueon, 2026-09-01
Source: @ins_mniac, 2026-09-01
Source: @nestaa51, 2026-09-29
Source: @busulle, 2026-10-04
Source: @spectakkular, 2026-10-04
Source: @civiloid, 2026-10-04
Source: @endsjeremy, 2026-10-04

Tenstorrent P150A and Blackhole

Civiloid (2026-08-30/31), who owned two: the P150A uses a custom L2 protocol in hardware (so it cannot act as an 800G NIC; DPDK ports reached only about 100G), and its software needs kernels rewritten, with ports to llama.cpp, vLLM or SGLang getting about 1/5 of the expected speed. Tenstorrent ran Qwen 3.6 27B on two P300s (4x P150) at about 20 tok/s decode, falling to 5 at 64k. Blackhole: about 660 TFLOPS BlockFP8, about 1/3 of A100 memory bandwidth, $1.4k for 32 GB. ju5t5omedude thinks an unlocked 170HX beats any single Tenstorrent card.

Reported
Source: @matstatman, 2026-08-30
Source: @civiloid, 2026-08-30
Source: @ju5t5omedude, 2026-08-31

GH200 dev boards on eBay

NikhilR (2026-10-03) reported GH200 dev boards being liquidated on eBay (H100 96 GB HBM plus Grace 480 GB, about $6.5k for a bare board plus module) and looked for co-sponsors. Open issues: how to boot it and connect power, no heatsinks for sale, no docs or firmware, and whether an AST2600 BMC attaches over MCIO and boots without firmware. quark2world: one listing has no chips, a matching heatsink is about $1k, and getting a dev board running could take days or never; Josh found it needs too many custom parts.

Reported
Source: @nikhilr1696, 2026-10-03
Source: @quark2world, 2026-10-03
Source: @humandrone8721_60165, 2026-10-03
Source: @_____josh_____, 2026-10-03

Apple, DGX Spark and Strix Halo

Decode and prefill measurements against these systems are on How the 170HX compares; this section keeps the price and value side.

DGX Spark and Mac Studio against the 170HX: value

• In August members agreed that 4 CMPs are cheaper and faster than 2 DGX Sparks. Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-08-22
  Source: @jo29_29, 2026-08-22
  Source: @artistosu, 2026-08-22
  Source: @meromgreen, 2026-08-23
• machinezero linked a Reddit post of DeepSeek V4 Flash on an M2 Ultra; others noted Macs' weak prefill. Source: @machinezer0, 2026-08-23
• Dino (2026-08-23): dual MI50s rival the 170HX in price and token generation, but need good PCIe lanes for tensor splitting plus ROCm wrangling (he got two 32 GB MI50s for about $200 as a fluke). Bart saw $500+ on eBay and $400 EXW on Alibaba, and nearly bought an 8x V100 32 GB NVLink server for $5k before the 170HX news. Source: @dino_38975, 2026-08-23
  Source: @justbendev, 2026-08-23
• SpiralGlide reported 4x DGX Spark running GLM int4/int8 at about 30 tok/s single stream and 60 aggregate, with only about 200k KV at fp8. Source: @spiralglide, 2026-08-24
• cibernox (2026-09-23): new M5 chips have about 4x the prior prefill, but a 256 GB / 4 TB Mac Studio costs about 14.5k EUR, and the DGX Spark's 270 GB/s bandwidth is its weak point. _L_: almost 3 DGX Sparks fit that budget, but an unlocked CMP 170HX is still much better value if you accept a PC build, and 4x CMP fit a rig budget even at inflated prices. Takka compared aggregate memory bandwidth, about 1.2 TB/s for the Mac against 540 GB/s for two Sparks, and put the decode gap at 2 to 4x. Source: @cibernox, 2026-09-23
  Source: @lia_oc, 2026-09-23
  Source: @spectakkular, 2026-09-23
• 2026-10-02 and 10-03: Landon owns 2 DGX Sparks and is considering 4x 170HX; domrockt2 sold his DGX Spark for a 4-card 170HX setup and does not look back; ikyo said a Mac Studio so far appears able to hold its own against a single 170HX (no model or numbers). Tokukarin: CMPs are much faster than a Mac and were much cheaper when he bought, though a Mac may suit people not good with hardware. orrorin and SeriousRising: CMPs cost less out of pocket if you already have supporting hardware, but need a time investment. Source: @domrockt2, 2026-10-02
  Source: @landontg, 2026-10-02
  Source: @ikyo, 2026-10-03
  Source: @_orrorin, 2026-10-03
  Source: @tokukarin, 2026-10-03
  Source: @seriousrising, 2026-10-03
• Takka (2026-10-05): the 64 GB DGX Spark launches at $5k with about 6x lower memory bandwidth (so a 6x lower decode ceiling) and roughly the same FP8 throughput (238 TFLOPS for the Spark against 205 for the 8 GB 170HX); FP4 he regards as not yet real. domrockt2 owned a Spark, found it "not far away from this hack job", and sold it to fund 170HX cards. Josh's counterpoint: the Spark is a supported retail product and the CMP is a hack on binned memory. Source: @spectakkular, 2026-10-05
  Source: @domrockt2, 2026-10-05
  Source: @_____josh_____, 2026-10-05
  Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-10-05

Reported 8 GB

DGX Spark and GB10 prices jumped in early September

irythros (2026-09-01): DGX Sparks had gone up 1k to 2k in 2 days. Schaka: the main models rose about 1.2k while ASUS was still about 1k cheaper, with the European price about 5,000 EUR including VAT and shipping; quark2world said that was still a better deal than 2x CMP 64 GB at 2,500+ EUR. Matej: GB10 alternatives went from 3,500 to 5,500 EUR. gpulover called an M5 Ultra 256 GB the only cost-effective option, and kellertreppe123 noted MSI had started selling 4 Sparks in one case.

Reported
Source: @irythros, 2026-09-01
Source: @schakaqt, 2026-09-02
Source: @quark2world, 2026-09-02
Source: @artistosu, 2026-09-03
Source: @matej87, 2026-09-03
Source: @kellertreppe123, 2026-09-04

Mac Studio M5 Ultra (256 GB, $9,499) against 4x CMP 170HX

• After the M5 Ultra launch (2026-08-25; 256 GB at $9,499, 512 GB expected in October), d3su called it a better deal than 4x CMP at current prices and segmond considered selling his cards; ST, machinezero and jac joined the thread. Source: @.d3su, 2026-08-25
  Source: @stcord, 2026-08-25
  Source: @segmond, 2026-08-25
  Source: @machinezer0, 2026-08-25
  Source: @jecquas, 2026-08-25
• Petar: prefill is compute-bound. An M3 Ultra does 300 to 500 tok/s PP on DeepSeek V4 Flash (a DS4F braindead quant on the Mac about 500 tok/s), and in agentic workloads input tokens are about 20x output, so PP and caching dominate; he expected Mac prefill at or below a DGX Spark, with no native FP4 or FP8. Source: @spale777, 2026-08-25
• giaki3003 measured base M4 prefill at 300 tok/s (50 on large prompts) and base M5 at 900 (400 on large prompts), projected 3.6k to 6k PP for the M5 Ultra (two M5 Max: 36 cores, 80 neural accelerators), and said CMP prefill would be worse regardless. Source: @giaki3003, 2026-08-25
• DeeJay preferred a $10.7k 256 GB Mac over 4 CMPs at $8,000 for its other uses. Source: @deejay9983, 2026-08-26
• bayley_w ran GLM-5.2 on a 512 GB Mac at about 30 tok/s prefill and said the M5 Ultra is only about 140 TFLOPS. Source: @bayley_w, 2026-08-26

Petar's and giaki3003's conclusion: 4x CMP 170HX is still the best gamble.

Contested

Four CMP 170HX against a Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256 GB: the price math

• DeeJay (2026-09-01): in the US the Mac Studio is $10,700 against about $8,800 for 4 CMPs; he would sell his CMPs for a Mac if card prices hit about 3k. Source: @deejay9983, 2026-09-01
• PJ compared a 15,499 AUD Mac Studio with 7,600 AUD for 4 CMP 170HX at his purchase price, plus a Chinese Huananzhi board (about $500), a PSU ($600), SSD and RAM ($800 to $1,000), and cooling, WiFi and CPU ($800 to $1,000). Source: @zingy90210, 2026-09-01
• clee: 1,300 tok/s prefill on Qwen3.8-27B (DeeJay's estimate for the M5 Ultra) would be poor for $10k+; he linked an oMLX M3 Ultra benchmark. Source: @c133, 2026-09-01
• Ikyo (2026-09-28) asked whether to keep four 170HX (256 GB in total) or replace them with a 256 GB M5 Ultra; fafinet and segmond would switch, citing CMP power draw and heat, and matstatman joked he would trade. Separately, Takka returned an R9700 for being extremely noisy with about 600 GB/s of bandwidth, and LT said at that price one could almost buy a 170HX. Source: @ikyo, 2026-09-28
  Source: @fafinet, 2026-09-28
  Source: @spectakkular, 2026-09-28
  Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-09-28
  Source: @segmond, 2026-09-28
  Source: @matstatman, 2026-09-28
• Waka324 (2026-09-30) put the lowest eBay price at about $2,500 per 170HX, so 4 cards cost about $10,000, while the cheapest M5 Ultra with the 80-core GPU was $10,800, shipping in 15 to 17 weeks; he argued the CMPs are much faster and may appreciate. MrManny (2 cards) weighed about $4k for 2 more against a discounted 256 GB M5 Ultra at $8,099.25. segmond would rather buy a 256 GB M5 Ultra than 4x 170HX at current prices, citing warranty, running cost and general usability; Morrowmake sees the Mac's only advantage as heat, noise and power. Source: @segmond, 2026-09-30
  Source: @cmdrwaka324, 2026-09-30
  Source: @mrmannyatx, 2026-09-30
  Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-09-30

Contested

8x 170HX against a 512 GB Mac Studio or a GB300 workstation

Impactic (2026-08-30) considered selling his 170HX cards for a 512 GB Mac Studio; Studebaker estimated that Mac at $20k to 25k and said 8x 170HX give much more compute. Rickcal suggested 4 CMPs on a PLX switch with Gen5 RAID 0 storage could compete with MSI's GB300 workstation (748 GB, about $100k; 252 GB HBM3e plus 496 GB LPDDR5X).

Theory
Source: @impactic, 2026-08-30
Source: @_studebaker_, 2026-08-30
Source: @rrickk420, 2026-08-31

The 64 GB DGX Spark at $4,999, and two DGX Sparks

Sojun (2026-10-02) named a Mac M5 Ultra 256 GB, or perhaps two DGX Sparks, as the direct alternatives to a 4-card CMP build. The same day cibernox noted NVIDIA's newly announced 64 GB Spark at $4,999 MSRP: half the memory for the price, with about 58 GB usable for inference after OS needs, a size in no man's land between 32 GB and 96 GB setups. segmond had expected a 256 GB Spark, and CUTE expected the announcement to push CMP prices higher.

Reported
Source: @sojun80, 2026-10-02
Source: @cibernox, 2026-10-02
Source: @segmond, 2026-10-02
Source: @cute_sc2, 2026-10-02

Strix Halo 192 GB at 273 GB/s: too slow

LT (2026-08-30): the Strix Halo 192 GB platform has only 273 GB/s of memory bandwidth, too slow, price unknown. reala had waited for it to run DeepSeek Flash models before buying CMPs instead.

Reported
Source: @licensedterrapin, 2026-08-30
Source: @reala7096, 2026-08-30

A DGX Spark beside CMP and V100 rigs over llama.cpp RPC (idea)

cuddylac997 (2026-09-24) bought a sealed DGX Spark for $3,900 but finds his quad V100 and quad CMP rigs do more for LLMs. segmond suggested llama.cpp RPC to add it for bigger models. cuddylac997 planned to combine it with an expanded V100 rig (4 more NVLinked SXM2 V100s, 384 GB RAM, 4x 128 GB Optane DIMMs, a CX6 NIC) and posted unverified, apparently AI-generated fit estimates such as GLM-5.2 UD-Q4_K_XL (467 GB). Untested. RPC on these cards: llama.cpp on CMP cards.

Theory
Source: @cuddylac997, 2026-09-24
Source: @segmond, 2026-09-24

Related

CMP 170HX, 8 GB card, 10 GB card, Buying, How the 170HX compares, Price history and market, Price history, July to October 2026, Buying from China as a foreigner, Other CMP cards and other NVIDIA GPUs, CMP 90HX unlock hub, 32 GB cards (subsystem 10de:1586), Compute, data types and missing features, NVLink, P2P, PCIe switch boards (PEX88096, PEX88064, PEX8747, PLX8749), Large rigs (8 or more cards), Card failure rates and longevity, llama.cpp on CMP cards, Undervolting and power limits, P-states and idle power, Rumours and claims to verify.

Imported from the cmpunlocker Discord with credit; see Credits.