M4 Max 48GB vs M6 32GB for local LLMs
1 report on the M4 Max 48GB and 3 on the M6 32GB
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3.5 4B at 4-bit, the M4 Max 48GB runs at 85.0 tokens per second (one run) and the M6 32GB at 16.2 (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 3.2x higher on the M4 Max 48GB (546 GB/s on the M4 Max 48GB, 171 on the M6 32GB).
- Memory
- 48GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 546 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 18.4 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 1
- Memory
- 32GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 171 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 3
Measured on both
Median tokens per second 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 quant level. Engines and context lengths can still differ between the runs. How to read these
| Model | M4 Max 48GB | M6 32GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.5 4B4-bit | 85.0one run | 16.2one run |
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 48GB | M6 32GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.5 4B | 45.5 t/sFP16 | 17.7 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 16.6 t/sQ6_K | 10.5 t/sQ4_K_S |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 66.0 t/sQ5_K_M | 38.2 t/sQ3_K_M |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 16.6 t/sQ6_K | 10.5 t/sQ4_K_S |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 32.3 t/sQ8_0 | 23.2 t/sQ4_K_M |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M4 Max 48GB · M6 32GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M4 Max 48GB · M6 32GB