llamaperf

M1 16GB vs M2 24GB for local LLMs

2 reports on the M1 16GB and 0 on the M2 24GB

Which is faster for local LLMs?

Nobody has reported the same model at the same quant on both cards yet, so there's no measured head-to-head. Memory bandwidth, which caps how fast a card can write, is 50% higher on the M2 24GB (68 GB/s on the M1 16GB, 102 on the M2 24GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.

M1 16GB
Memory
16GB unified
Memory bandwidth
68 GB/s
FP16 compute
2.6 TFLOPS
Reports
2
M2 24GB
Memory
24GB unified
Memory bandwidth
102 GB/s
FP16 compute
3.6 TFLOPS
Reports
0

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.

ModelM1 16GBM2 24GB
Qwen3.8 27Bdoesn't fit at these settings9.8 t/sQ2_K
Qwen3.8 125B · 6B activedoesn't fit at these settingsdoesn't fit at these settings
DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B activedoesn't fit at these settingsdoesn't fit at these settings
Qwen3.6 35B · 3B activedoesn't fit at these settings32.3 t/sQ2_K
Qwen3.6 27Bdoesn't fit at these settings9.8 t/sQ2_K
Gemma 4 26B · 4B activedoesn't fit at these settings21.8 t/sQ3_K_S

Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M1 16GB · M2 24GB

Every report on each card, with its source: M1 16GB · M2 24GB

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