M2 Max 64GB vs M3 Max 48GB for local LLMs
20 reports on the M2 Max 64GB and 3 on the M3 Max 48GB
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 about the same on both (410 GB/s on the M2 Max 64GB, 410 on the M3 Max 48GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.
M2 Max 64GB
- Memory
- 64GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 410 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 13.6 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 20
M3 Max 48GB
- Memory
- 48GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 410 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 14.2 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 3
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 64GB | M3 Max 48GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 10.4 t/sQ8_0 | 13.1 t/sQ6_K |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | 47.5 t/sQ2_K | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 32.9 t/sQ8_0 | 52.2 t/sQ5_K_M |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 10.4 t/sQ8_0 | 13.1 t/sQ6_K |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 28.2 t/sQ8_0 | 25.5 t/sQ8_0 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M2 Max 64GB · M3 Max 48GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M2 Max 64GB · M3 Max 48GB