M4 Max 128GB vs M5 Ultra 96GB for local LLMs
12 reports on the M4 Max 128GB and 3 on the M5 Ultra 96GB
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 2.3x higher on the M5 Ultra 96GB (546 GB/s on the M4 Max 128GB, 1,229 on the M5 Ultra 96GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.
M4 Max 128GB
- Memory
- 128GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 546 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 18.4 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 12
M5 Ultra 96GB
- Memory
- 96GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 1,229 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 3
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 | M4 Max 128GB | M5 Ultra 96GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 6.7 t/sFP16 | 14.9 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | 30.7 t/sQ5_K_S | 103.1 t/sQ3_K_M |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | 48.3 t/sQ2_K | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 21.2 t/sFP16 | 107.0 t/sQ8_0 |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 6.7 t/sFP16 | 14.9 t/sFP16 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 18.2 t/sFP16 | 35.5 t/sFP16 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M4 Max 128GB · M5 Ultra 96GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M4 Max 128GB · M5 Ultra 96GB