M5 32GB vs AMD Strix Halo 128GB for local LLMs
4 reports on the M5 32GB and 318 on the AMD Strix Halo 128GB
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3 30B · 3B active at 4-bit, the M5 32GB has 57.0 generation tokens/s (one run); prompt processing 1063.0 tokens/s (one run); the AMD Strix Halo 128GB has 73.7 generation tokens/s (3 runs); prompt processing 920.0 tokens/s (3 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 1.7x higher on the AMD Strix Halo 128GB (154 GB/s on the M5 32GB, 256 on the AMD Strix Halo 128GB).
- Memory
- 32GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 154 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 4
- Memory
- 128GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 256 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 59 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 318
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 | M5 32GB | AMD Strix Halo 128GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 30B · 3B active4-bit | 57.0one runPP 1063.0 (one run)MLXcontext not stated | 73.73 runsPP 920.0 (3 runs)llama.cpp48K context, 2 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.
| Model | M5 32GB | AMD Strix Halo 128GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 30B · 3B active | 53.0 t/sQ2_K | 12.6 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 9.2 t/sQ4_K_S | 3.5 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 12.6 t/sQ6_K |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 33.5 t/sQ3_K_M | 12.6 t/sFP16 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 33.5 t/sQ2_K |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 9.2 t/sQ4_K_S | 3.5 t/sFP16 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 20.3 t/sQ4_K_M | 9.5 t/sFP16 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M5 32GB · AMD Strix Halo 128GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M5 32GB · AMD Strix Halo 128GB