M4 Max 128GB vs NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB for local LLMs
52 reports on the M4 Max 128GB and 67 on the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3.8 27B at 3-bit, the M4 Max 128GB has 23.9 generation tokens/s (2 runs); prompt processing 249.7 tokens/s (2 runs); the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB has 28.8 generation tokens/s (2 runs); prompt processing 400.0 tokens/s (one run). 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 22% higher on the M4 Max 128GB (546 GB/s on the M4 Max 128GB, 448 on the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB). Across 2 shared models with generation measurements on both cards, the M4 Max 128GB's median is higher on 0 and the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB's on 2.
- Memory
- 128GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 546 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 18.4 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 52
- Memory
- 16GB
- Memory bandwidth
- 448 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 95 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 67
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
| Model | M4 Max 128GB | NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B3-bit | 23.92 runsPP 249.7 (2 runs)llama.cppcontext not stated | 28.82 runsPP 400.0 (one run)llama.cpp4K to 200K context |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active4-bit | 88.1one runPP 1408.1 (one run)llama.cppcontext not stated | 95.2one runPP 3476.0 (one run)llama.cpp64K 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.
| Model | M4 Max 128GB | NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 6.7 t/sFP16 | 29.2 t/sQ2_K |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 18.2 t/sFP16 | 65.1 t/sQ3_K_S |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | 30.7 t/sQ5_K_S | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 21.2 t/sFP16 | 96.6 t/sQ2_K |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | 48.3 t/sQ2_K | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 6.7 t/sFP16 | 29.2 t/sQ2_K |
| GLM-5.3 320B · 18B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 552B · 16B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M4 Max 128GB · NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M4 Max 128GB · NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB