llamaperf

M4 24GB vs AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB for local LLMs

8 reports on the M4 24GB and 7 on the AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB

Which is faster for local LLMs?

On Qwen3.8 27B at 4-bit, the M4 24GB has 6.5 generation tokens/s (one run); prompt processing 60.8 tokens/s (one run); the AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB has 35.0 generation 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 5.2x higher on the AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB (120 GB/s on the M4 24GB, 624 on the AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB).

M4 24GB
Memory
24GB unified
Memory bandwidth
120 GB/s
FP16 compute
4.3 TFLOPS
Reports
8
AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB
Memory
16GB
Memory bandwidth
624 GB/s
FP16 compute
75 TFLOPS
Reports
7

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 24GBAMD RX 7800 XT 16GB
Qwen3.8 27B4-bit6.5one runPP 60.8 (one run)llama.cppcontext not stated35.02 runsllama.cpp, 1 not stated100K to 120K context

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 24GBAMD RX 7800 XT 16GB
Qwen3.8 27B10.8 t/sQ2_K40.7 t/sQ2_K
Qwen3.8 125B · 6B activedoesn't fit at these settingsdoesn't fit at these settings
Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active35.8 t/sQ2_K134.6 t/sQ2_K
DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B activedoesn't fit at these settingsdoesn't fit at these settings
Qwen3.6 27B10.8 t/sQ2_K40.7 t/sQ2_K
Gemma 4 26B · 4B active24.1 t/sQ3_K_S90.7 t/sQ3_K_S
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 24GB · AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB

Every report on each card, with its source: M4 24GB · AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB

More comparisons