New NPU Mobile Processor or i9 14900K

[CyberProtea]

Yo

I'm currently sourcing a pc build/laptop for one of my client's

The dude is a software dev & he has made a transition into everything AI related with his work, he currently has a project related to AI & facial recognition & LLM

Guy wants a new machine

From my understanding the NPU's wont make much of a difference currently , A RTX 4070 & a 14900K would be much better in terms of processing power


If anyone can give some insight it would be greatly appreciated

 

[JollyJamma]

Yo

I'm currently sourcing a pc build/laptop for one of my client's

The dude is a software dev & he has made a transition into everything AI related with his work, he currently has a project related to AI & facial recognition & LLM

Guy wants a new machine

From my understanding the NPU's wont make much of a difference currently , A RTX 4070 & a 14900K would be much better in terms of processing power


If anyone can give some insight it would be greatly appreciated

3 questions, what’s the software specifically?

Does it support Nvidia CUDA or what?

What is a NPU?

If it uses Nvidia CUDA cores, the CPU won’t make a huge difference.

14900K is hot and difficult to cool as it’s a small sized CPU and tons of wattage.

Puget systems might have more information but you’d need to list the software specifically.

 

[johnny_h]

I'm no AI expert at all, but from what I've been reading on Intel's Meteor Lake, I'd rather focus on GPU like @JollyJamma says.

The NPU isn't as good as a good GPU, and I believe is currently only available on Laptops.


I also believe Intel advises that the NPU + GPU would provide the best performance when supported (though the GPU would still be contributing the most).

Intel's own slides show only GPU to beat only NPU in Stable Diffusion, but NPU+GPU being the fastest (just a bit faster):

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-meteor-lake-technical-deep-dive/images/ai-12.jpg

That's a slow GPU btw, considering it only used 37w.

Tom's Hardware also did a test on Meteor Lake:

I tested Meteor Lake CPUs on Intel's optimized AI tools: AMD's chips often beat them

The new chips' NPU helps a lot, but AMD's AI accelerated Ryzen CPUs won on some tests.

www.tomshardware.com

I'd personally go with a desktop as you don't deal with thermal throttling, get more VRAM with desktop cards, higher performance and easier to cool.

 

[JollyJamma]

You almost certainly don't want a laptop for this specific task.

You might use an external GPU enclosure and a Thunderbolt connection to the laptop to help the laptop process the data faster (this is if your friend had to have a laptop) but it would be trounced by a full-sized desktop with even a 14700K and a 4090/4080 Super.

Laptops should never really be used for dedicated rendering/machine learning/anything that runs the system at full speed. It'll be a hot mess that you'll just end up hating.

Heat is a laptop's biggest obstacle.

I'd even suggest a mid-range build like a 14600K and a 4070 Ti Super which you then remote into and submit data to via a laptop. You could easily get a UPS and have it remotely located in a house or wherever there's constant power.