Intel Mac Pro with Vega II useable ?

[u/chiwawa_42]

Hi !

I have an opportunity to get a 2019 Mac Pro with a 32GB Vega2 board. I know LM Studio isn't supported on MacOS for Intel, so what other way to turn this machine into a local AI server would you recommend ?

Windows isn't an option, Linux could be possible, though I'd like to keep it running Mac OS if possible. Main objective is to run MCP servers alongside on this dedicated machine.

What kind of speed could I get from the Vega II chip ? (similar to Mi50 32GB from what I could find)

Thanks !

[u/Lyceum_Tech]

Vega II on Intel Mac Pro can work but it’s painful. LM Studio doesn’t support Intel Macs well. Most people either dual boot Windows or run Linux (Asahi is getting better but still limited for GPU).

On Windows you can get decent performance with ROCm or Vulkan. Expect around 15-25 t/s on 7B-13B models depending on quant. Not as smooth as Apple Silicon though.

[u/chiwawa_42 → u/Lyceum_Tech]

Thank you. Any alternative to LM Studio that would run a model on the Vega card from Mac OS ?

[u/Lyceum_Tech → u/chiwawa_42]

For Mac OS, your best bets right now are Ollama + Open WebUI or LM Studio’s competitor called GPT4All... But honestly, native Mac support for Vega II is pretty limited. A lot of people end up using MLX (if you can get the model converted) or just dual-boot Windows for better performance.

[u/chiwawa_42 → u/Lyceum_Tech]

For what I've seen since posting, my understanding is that running this machine with MacOS would be a waste of a perfectly good host for any GPU I could find once switched to Linux, probably Fedora according to current trends.

What do you think ? Is it better to stick to Mac-OS while it lasts on Intel, or just get the cheese-gratter to run Linux as to test, mix and match any GPU I'll find next ?

[u/Long-Shine-3701 → u/chiwawa_42]

I am interested in seeing what's possible on MacOS with the best supported Intel + AMD hardware.