llamaperf

M4 16GB vs M4 Pro 64GB for local LLMs

26 reports on the M4 16GB and 33 on the M4 Pro 64GB

Which is faster for local LLMs?

On Gemma 4 26B · 4B active at 4-bit, the M4 16GB has 30.9 generation tokens/s (one run); the M4 Pro 64GB has 57.3 generation tokens/s (2 runs); prompt processing 774.8 tokens/s (2 runs). 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 2.3x higher on the M4 Pro 64GB (120 GB/s on the M4 16GB, 273 on the M4 Pro 64GB).

M4 16GB
Memory
16GB unified
Memory bandwidth
120 GB/s
FP16 compute
4.3 TFLOPS
Reports
26
M4 Pro 64GB
Memory
64GB unified
Memory bandwidth
273 GB/s
FP16 compute
9.2 TFLOPS
Reports
33

Measured on both

Generation and prompt processing speeds 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 bit class. Each side shows the engines and reported context behind its median. Context can mean a configured window or prompt depth, so these are community comparisons with differing settings. How to read these

ModelM4 16GBM4 Pro 64GB
Gemma 4 26B · 4B active4-bit30.9one runllama.cpp64K context57.32 runsPP 774.8 (2 runs)llama.cpp, 1 not statedcontext not stated

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.

ModelM4 16GBM4 Pro 64GB
Gemma 4 26B · 4B activedoesn't fit at these settings20.7 t/sQ8_0
Qwen3.8 27Bdoesn't fit at these settings7.7 t/sQ8_0
Qwen3.8 125B · 6B activedoesn't fit at these settings34.9 t/sQ2_K
Qwen3.6 35B · 3B activedoesn't fit at these settings24.1 t/sQ8_0
DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B activedoesn't fit at these settingsdoesn't fit at these settings
Qwen3.6 27Bdoesn't fit at these settings7.7 t/sQ8_0
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 552B · 16B activedoesn't fit at these settingsdoesn't fit at these settings

Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M4 16GB · M4 Pro 64GB

Every report on each card, with its source: M4 16GB · M4 Pro 64GB

More comparisons