M2 Max 32GB vs M4 16GB for local LLMs
3 reports on the M2 Max 32GB and 26 on the M4 16GB
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 3.4x higher on the M2 Max 32GB (410 GB/s on the M2 Max 32GB, 120 on the M4 16GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.
M2 Max 32GB
- Memory
- 32GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 410 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 13.6 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 3
M4 16GB
- Memory
- 16GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 120 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 4.3 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 26
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.
| Model | M2 Max 32GB | M4 16GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 20.9 t/sQ4_K_S | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 76.1 t/sQ3_K_M | doesn't fit at these settings |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 20.9 t/sQ4_K_S | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 46.1 t/sQ4_K_M | doesn't fit at these settings |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M2 Max 32GB · M4 16GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M2 Max 32GB · M4 16GB