M2 Pro 32GB vs M5 Ultra 256GB for local LLMs
1 report on the M2 Pro 32GB and 12 on the M5 Ultra 256GB
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3.8 27B at 4-bit, the M2 Pro 32GB runs at 8.6 tokens per second (one run) and the M5 Ultra 256GB at 50.0 (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 6.0x higher on the M5 Ultra 256GB (205 GB/s on the M2 Pro 32GB, 1,229 on the M5 Ultra 256GB).
- Memory
- 32GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 205 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 6.8 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 1
- Memory
- 256GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 1,229 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 12
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 Pro 32GB | M5 Ultra 256GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B4-bit | 8.6one run | 50.0one 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 Pro 32GB | M5 Ultra 256GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 11.5 t/sQ4_K_S | 14.9 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 50.8 t/sQ8_0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 66.9 t/sQ4_K_M |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 41.9 t/sQ3_K_M | 53.5 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 11.5 t/sQ4_K_S | 14.9 t/sFP16 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 25.4 t/sQ4_K_M | 40.1 t/sFP16 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 552B · 16B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 89.4 t/sQ2_K |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M2 Pro 32GB · M5 Ultra 256GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M2 Pro 32GB · M5 Ultra 256GB