# AMD Instinct MI50

8 Hacker News commenters recommended AMD Instinct MI50 and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for its 32GB of fast HBM2 VRAM, about 1TB/s bandwidth, for running large local AI models. Critics note weak compute, manual recompilation and AMD deprecating cards.

## Why people recommend it

- Lots of VRAM for large models (3 comments): "A few people on r/localllama have shown setups with multiple MI50s running with 128gb of VRAM and doing a decent job with large models." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45799519)) "or a Mi50 16GB or <$200 but you’d need to stack 4 of them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234071)) "Maybe pick up a couple MI50 32GB cards off Alibaba." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813547))
- Fast HBM2 memory bandwidth (2 comments): "It has 1TB/s vram bandwidth thanks to its HBM2." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49480952)) "stupidly fast VRAM and basically no compute" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48215863))

## What people warn about

- Needs manual recompilation and patching (2 comments): "it's not without some pain points like manual recompilation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48347653)) "i need to patch all of my applications to work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764974))
- Weak compute, not designed for AI (2 comments): "That card isn't even really designed for AI workloads at all." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49603326)) "stupidly fast VRAM and basically no compute" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48215863))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [NVIDIA H100](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-h100.md): 20 recommend
- [NVIDIA Tesla V100](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-tesla-v100.md): 16 recommend
- [AMD Instinct MI355X](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-instinct.md): 14 recommend
- [Nvidia A100](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-a100-gpu.md): 10 recommend
- [Intel D270 GPU AI Accelerator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intel-d270-gpu-ai-accelerator.md): 10 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=AMD+Instinct+MI50+32GB&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "AMD Instinct MI50", https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-instinct-mi50/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).