M3 Max 48GB vs M4 Max 64GB for local LLMs
3 reports on the M3 Max 48GB and 18 on the M4 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 33% higher on the M4 Max 64GB (410 GB/s on the M3 Max 48GB, 546 on the M4 Max 64GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.
M3 Max 48GB
- Memory
- 48GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 410 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 14.2 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 3
M4 Max 64GB
- Memory
- 64GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 546 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 18.4 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 18
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 | M3 Max 48GB | M4 Max 64GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 13.1 t/sQ6_K | 13.5 t/sQ8_0 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 61.4 t/sQ2_K |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 52.2 t/sQ5_K_M | 42.5 t/sQ8_0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 13.1 t/sQ6_K | 13.5 t/sQ8_0 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 25.5 t/sQ8_0 | 36.4 t/sQ8_0 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M3 Max 48GB · M4 Max 64GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M3 Max 48GB · M4 Max 64GB