llamaperf

AMD MI50 32GB vs M4 Max 128GB for local LLMs

13 reports on the AMD MI50 32GB and 52 on the M4 Max 128GB

Which is faster for local LLMs?

On Qwen3.8 27B at 8-bit, the AMD MI50 32GB has 22.8 generation tokens/s (one run); the M4 Max 128GB has 15.7 generation tokens/s (one run); prompt processing 255.7 tokens/s (one run). Those are community reports whose engines and settings differ, so the gap is a rough sign, not a controlled measure of the two cards. Memory bandwidth, which caps how fast a card can write, is 1.9x higher on the AMD MI50 32GB (1,024 GB/s on the AMD MI50 32GB, 546 on the M4 Max 128GB).

AMD MI50 32GB
Memory
32GB
Memory bandwidth
1,024 GB/s
FP16 compute
26.5 TFLOPS
Reports
13
M4 Max 128GB
Memory
128GB unified
Memory bandwidth
546 GB/s
FP16 compute
18.4 TFLOPS
Reports
52

Measured on both

Generation and prompt processing speeds from plain runs (one device, one request, no speculative decoding, the whole model in the device's memory) of the same model size at the same bit class. Each side shows the engines and reported context behind its median. Context can mean a configured window or prompt depth, so these are community comparisons with differing settings. How to read these

ModelAMD MI50 32GBM4 Max 128GB
Qwen3.8 27B8-bit22.8one runengine not stated65K context15.7one runPP 255.7 (one run)llama.cppcontext not stated

Estimated by the calculator

The quant the calculator recommends for each card and its estimated speed at a 32,768-token context with 32 GB of system RAM, from memory bandwidth and the model's shape. Where a model was also measured above, the measurement wins.

ModelAMD MI50 32GBM4 Max 128GB
Qwen3.8 27B25.7 t/sQ6_K6.7 t/sFP16
Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active19.6 t/sQ2_K, experts in RAM30.7 t/sQ5_K_S
Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active93.1 t/sQ5_K_M21.2 t/sFP16
DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B activedoesn't fit at these settings48.3 t/sQ2_K
Qwen3.6 27B25.7 t/sQ6_K6.7 t/sFP16
Gemma 4 26B · 4B active65.4 t/sQ6_K18.2 t/sFP16
GLM-5.3 320B · 18B activedoesn't fit at these settingsdoesn't fit at these settings

Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: AMD MI50 32GB · M4 Max 128GB

Every report on each card, with its source: AMD MI50 32GB · M4 Max 128GB

More comparisons