M2 Max 64GB vs M5 Max 64GB for local LLMs
20 reports on the M2 Max 64GB and 6 on the M5 Max 64GB
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 M5 Max 64GB (410 GB/s on the M2 Max 64GB, 614 on the M5 Max 64GB). 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
M5 Max 64GB
- Memory
- 64GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 614 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 6
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 | M5 Max 64GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 10.4 t/sQ8_0 | 18.1 t/sQ8_0 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | 47.5 t/sQ2_K | 82.3 t/sQ2_K |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 32.9 t/sQ8_0 | 56.9 t/sQ8_0 |
| 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 | 18.1 t/sQ8_0 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 28.2 t/sQ8_0 | 48.8 t/sQ8_0 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M2 Max 64GB · M5 Max 64GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M2 Max 64GB · M5 Max 64GB