M2 Max 32GB vs M6 32GB for local LLMs
2 reports on the M2 Max 32GB and 2 on the M6 32GB
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active at 4-bit, the M2 Max 32GB runs at 39.3 tokens per second (2 runs) and the M6 32GB at 63.8 (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 2.4x higher on the M2 Max 32GB (410 GB/s on the M2 Max 32GB, 171 on the M6 32GB).
- Memory
- 32GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 410 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 13.6 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 2
- Memory
- 32GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 171 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 2
Measured on both
Median tokens per second 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 quant level. Engines and context lengths can still differ between the runs. How to read these
| Model | M2 Max 32GB | M6 32GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active4-bit | 39.32 runs | 63.8one run |
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.
| Model | M2 Max 32GB | M6 32GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 76.1 t/sQ3_K_M | 38.2 t/sQ3_K_M |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 20.9 t/sQ4_K_S | 10.5 t/sQ4_K_S |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 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 | 10.5 t/sQ4_K_S |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 46.1 t/sQ4_K_M | 23.2 t/sQ4_K_M |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 552B · 16B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M2 Max 32GB · M6 32GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M2 Max 32GB · M6 32GB