M2 Max 96GB vs M5 Max 128GB for local LLMs
7 reports on the M2 Max 96GB and 48 on the M5 Max 128GB
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 128GB (410 GB/s on the M2 Max 96GB, 614 on the M5 Max 128GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.
M2 Max 96GB
- Memory
- 96GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 410 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 13.6 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 7
M5 Max 128GB
- Memory
- 128GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 614 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 48
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 96GB | M5 Max 128GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 5.2 t/sFP16 | 9.0 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | 36.2 t/sQ3_K_M | 41.2 t/sQ5_K_S |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 37.6 t/sQ8_0 | 28.5 t/sFP16 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 64.8 t/sQ2_K |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 5.2 t/sFP16 | 9.0 t/sFP16 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 12.5 t/sFP16 | 24.4 t/sFP16 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M2 Max 96GB · M5 Max 128GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M2 Max 96GB · M5 Max 128GB