M3 Ultra 96GB vs M5 Max 128GB for local LLMs
10 reports on the M3 Ultra 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 33% higher on the M3 Ultra 96GB (819 GB/s on the M3 Ultra 96GB, 614 on the M5 Max 128GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.
M3 Ultra 96GB
- Memory
- 96GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 819 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 21.3 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 10
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 | M3 Ultra 96GB | M5 Max 128GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 7.9 t/sFP16 | 9.0 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | 55.1 t/sQ3_K_M | 41.2 t/sQ5_K_S |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 57.1 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 | 7.9 t/sFP16 | 9.0 t/sFP16 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 19.0 t/sFP16 | 24.4 t/sFP16 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M3 Ultra 96GB · M5 Max 128GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M3 Ultra 96GB · M5 Max 128GB