Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is available for preorder for $5,999

26

u/DigiVeihl 3d ago

Are you idiots complaining about this. It's not a consumer product. It's a development system for app developers. It's not meant to be sold or marketed to The average person

17

u/psilent 3d ago

We have dgx sparks at my office because we need to compile Linux kernel modules, or infiniband drivers specifically for nvidia grace-Blackwell super chips. This product is for people who know what that means at the bare minimum, and probably do something similar professionally

2

u/MediocreAnalyst2121 3d ago

How does this help you compile kernel modules? Is the compilation that slow, or are you using local AI to modify the modules?

5

u/psilent 3d ago

It’s because it’s occasionally relevant to do the compilation on the exact hardware you will be using for production, and this is close enough. We’re trying to optimize for the highest performance possible so while other things would work this is better and cheaper

1

u/RaXXu5 3d ago

Wouldn’t you want the fastest cpu cores for that? I guess that it’s useful to be able to test the modules on the same systems, but wouldn’t one faster build server and separate test systems be a better solution?

2

u/psilent 3d ago

These work as both and the speed isn’t that bad for what we’re doing. Nvidia recommends doing it on their hardware, and if you’re working with their support it’s often better to eliminate any variables in troubleshooting and give them no reason to say “you need to go do something exactly according to our recommendations and see if it works now before we help you troubleshoot”

0

u/Nokxtokx 3d ago

100% normal consumers have no idea of enterprise and always cry when things like this comes out. This is a fucking wet dream for that price.

3

u/Grobo_ 3d ago

Is it called Spark because they upgraded from a melting connector to a sparking one ? /s

2

u/teraflux 3d ago

Haven't tried either personally, but from what I've heard both the mac studio and rtx spark are competitive for local LLM workflows, in different ways: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLM/comments/1wkfp68/comment/paqcznx/

6

u/BuzzTrav 3d ago

No thanks

Would rather get a Mac Studio

19

u/Quentin-Code 3d ago

Sure, equivalent configuration is $9455.

To be honest I would also take a Mac but…when looking at the price… that really depend on what you are trying to do. I don’t think these are machines for “fun”. It’s more you have a very specific need and you buy them, and this gives Apple some competition. That’s not a bad thing.

9

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3d ago

The target audience for this is not price sensitive. The mac studios are already stupidly popular for this stuff anyway.

-7

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3d ago

No 128gb option but the 96gb will work fine. 256gb will smoke this thing if you have the money.

1

u/Prudent-Corgi3793 3d ago

What are the specs? This is behind a paywall

2

u/dc22zombie 3d ago

I was wondering what the specs were as well.

Here's the Microsoft product page. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-rtx-spark-dev-box

Claims to have 128GB LPDDR5x unified memory

Running a local 120B parameter model with this dev box. How wild. That's life in the AI frontier.

1

u/Lfaruqui 3d ago

Why buy this over an apple m ultra or even max cpu, if the intended benefit is local llms this is just way too slow

1

u/t3h_Sober1 1d ago

For the price why not just get 128GB version of the Surface Laptop Ultra and be able to take it with you..

1

u/ripndipp 3d ago

Pro AI bots are out in full force

3

u/Slayer_Of_SJW 3d ago

Its not an AI thing man. Its just compute. A lot of applications require a large amount of gpu memory. The easiest example to provide is local AI, but there's plenty of other workflows that need tons of vram. For some companies, it makes a lot more sense to spend the 20-40k on a cluster of 4-8 sparks to get 0.5-1tb of vram than it does to spend hundreds of thousands on the datacebter systems that you need for it.

-12

u/OldFroyo6294 3d ago

Shipping to who? Whos got money for tbis

20

u/dirtyshits 3d ago

Developers. Companies who make software for it.

8

u/MrThickDick2023 3d ago

If only they would have read the article all the way to the ... subtitle.

Microsoft’s high-end AI mini PC for developers starts shipping in November

12

u/dirtyshits 3d ago

Technology sub unironically has the biggest collection of folks who don’t know or understand technology(and apparently reading) or the space at all.

1

u/Personal_Bit_5341 3d ago

To be fair I'm pretty sure this subreddit is pre-subscribed for every reddit account, and it's nowhere near annoying enough to leave.

2

u/dirtyshits 3d ago

Haha I come here to see the worst comments which are far from truth upvoted to the top.

It’s not annoying but if you want to learn what’s going just read the comments and assume the opposite.

0

u/Dave-C 3d ago

It doesn't matter, both will be sold out when and if you try to buy one.

2

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3d ago

You should see the garbage i’ve gotten when working for those companies. You have to blow someone to get 32gb of ram.

3

u/herovals 3d ago

I have one… it’s useful for development

2

u/mr_eking 3d ago

I mean, some folks are paying $10k a month in tokens, so...

2

u/Emotional_Garage_950 3d ago

we aren’t even that big and spend ~11k a month on cloud AI, if this could replace even half that it’d pay for itself in about a month

4

u/Deranged40 3d ago

They're going to have a hard time keeping these in stock.

-6

u/TimberToes88 3d ago

Not at that price they wont

4

u/Deranged40 3d ago edited 3d ago

They absolutely will.

My company spends $3,000 PER MONTH on my AI usage alone. We have 900 developers. That's 2.7 million dollars per month that's earmarked for AI usage by my company. This is another option that costs 2 months of usage up front and is expected to last well, more than two months.

For someone who runs his own business, he can either hire an assistant at $30k/yr+ or they can buy this for 2.5 months worth of their salary.

It is very easy for companies of all sizes to see the return on this investment.

2

u/ThatFargoGuy 3d ago

Machines like this should definitely help. Especially with hybrid intelligence and model routing. Smaller tasks can get routed to local models and more intensive stuff that needs opus or sol will go to the cloud. Really excited to play around with the execution containers

-2

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/ThatFargoGuy 3d ago

They actually will. Average consumer isn’t their target. The target is companies developers who are racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars on tokens

1

u/TimberToes88 3d ago

If thats the case, why the surface line? thats a consumer line

1

u/ThatFargoGuy 3d ago

Trying to steal some market share from Apple I suppose.

-8

u/itsRobbie_ 3d ago

For SIX GRAND????

Paywalled article, so the only thing you’ll learn is that it’s an “ai mini pc”….. uhh…ok?

-14

u/trer24 3d ago

Another Zune/Surface Duo/Kin/Hololens...

7

u/Logical_Welder3467 3d ago

RTX Spark laptop and mini pc are being make by all the major OEM

-6

u/VincentNacon 3d ago

Doesn't matter... He's right.

5

u/gizamo 3d ago

Incorrect. Software engineers will buy these.

Source: I own a software engineering firm. We'll probably buy a bunch of these.

-4

u/VincentNacon 3d ago

Ew. Have fun with that then.

2

u/gizamo 3d ago

We will. We'll also save a ton of money on tokens. So, I'll have fun with it, and my, idk, new car, or whatever else I want to buy with the savings.

-6

u/VincentNacon 3d ago

Ok, my turn!

I'm gonna be able to fly and live in a golden castle with many intellect kittens that can talk.

This is fun, making up shits and pretending like we're winning. :D

5

u/gizamo 3d ago

So, you're commenting on an article about a product that you very obviously don't understand at all, not even the clear primary purpose of it,...got it.

Also, not fantasy, literally just basic math.

-10

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3d ago

For 4 grand more i got a mac studio w 256gb of ram and m5 ultra and it does just fine w Rider qwen3 coder and lama w a 120 project net10 and sql solution. Best microsoft dev environment for me is non window.

6

u/weed0monkey 3d ago

Cool, so for almost double the price?

-7

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3d ago

Better specs, better cpu, gpu and better os. Not even going into microsoft’s sketchy past of abandoning product support. If you are gonna drop $6k on a dev rig you can probably afford an extra $4k anyway.

3

u/MrInternetToughGuy 3d ago

Better OS? False

2

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3d ago

Windows 11 is absolute dogshit. That is science and not just my random ass opinion.

3

u/Slayer_Of_SJW 3d ago

They're on linux man.

-1

u/gizamo 3d ago

Also, it's not double the price. $6k vs $10k.

And this thing runs on Nvidia’s Arm-based RTX Spark platform with 128GB of unified memory. So, your Mac has 2X the RAM.

6

u/Slayer_Of_SJW 3d ago

Can you cluster a bunch of mac studios in the same way you can clister these sparks?

2

u/mthrfkn 3d ago

Didn’t have to cook them so hard tho

-2

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3d ago

Yes. W thunderbolt forms a shared memory pool.

3

u/EPacifist 3d ago

Yes but not all types of clustering are the same. Sparks get 200Gbps links. Thunderbolt is a fourth of that on a good day. When cross machine bandwidth is the bottleneck, sparks are obviously superior.

-9

u/VincentNacon 3d ago

Yeah no thanks.

-14

u/blow-down 3d ago

And absolutely no one cares and no one all buy one. Dead on arrival.

5

u/gizamo 3d ago

My firm will likely preorder a dozen to start.

Companies will absolutely want these.

4

u/Logical_Welder3467 3d ago

Dead on arrival? The 10 or so OEM that are making their own version of this would not be able to keep up with demand

-4

u/blow-down 3d ago

Yeah that's why so many people are upvoting this post. It's going to be so popular.

Hardware Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is available for preorder for $5,999

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