AMD’s latest graphics card, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, is setting new standards by outpacing NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090 when it comes to DeepSeek’s R1 AI model inference benchmarks.
Swift Action from AMD Elevates DeepSeek’s R1 Model Performance
DeepSeek’s newest AI model has made waves across the tech scene, and many are speculating about the high-end computing power needed to train such a model. Luckily, everyday consumers aren’t left in the dust. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU from AMD’s "RDNA 3" series delivers impressive performance capabilities, according to recent benchmark comparisons. AMD proudly showcases these results, establishing their flagship GPU as superior across various models when pitted against NVIDIA’s offerings.
A recent tweet from AMD’s David McAfee highlights the value of the 7900 XTX for running DeepSeek models, guiding users on how to leverage Radeon GPUs and Ryzen AI APUs for optimized performance.
Consumer-grade GPUs have long been a more economical choice for AI tasks when stacked against traditional AI accelerators. Plus, running models on one’s own hardware adds a layer of privacy that’s undeniably appealing—especially with regards to applying DeepSeek’s AI. To help users navigate this, AMD provides an insightful guide on running DeepSeek R1 distillations on their GPUs. Here’s a simplified breakdown:
- Ensure you have the 25.1.1 Optional or later Adrenalin driver.
- Head over to lmstudio.ai/ryzenai to download LM Studio 0.3.8 or newer.
- Install LM Studio and get past the onboarding screen.
- Click the discover tab.
- Select a DeepSeek R1 Distill. Starting with smaller distills like the Qwen 1.5B is recommended for speed, while larger ones enhance reasoning capabilities. All options are highly effective.
- On the right, set “Q4 K M” quantization and hit “Download.”
- After downloading, switch to the chat tab. Select your DeepSeek R1 distill from the dropdown, ensuring “manually select parameters” is checked.
- For GPU offload layers, max out the slider.
- Load the model.
- Enjoy interacting with a reasoning model powered entirely by your AMD setup!
If these steps seem daunting, don’t worry. AMD has also released a YouTube tutorial that explains each step in detail. By following this, you can confidently run DeepSeek’s language models on your AMD hardware, securing your data from misuse. With new GPUs on the horizon, featuring built-in AI engines, both AMD and NVIDIA are expected to further enhance inference capabilities significantly.
