M5 Max 48GB vs M5 Pro 64GB for local LLMs
67 reports on the M5 Max 48GB and 16 on the M5 Pro 64GB
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 2.0x higher on the M5 Max 48GB (614 GB/s on the M5 Max 48GB, 307 on the M5 Pro 64GB). The estimates below compare them on the models people run most.
M5 Max 48GB
- Memory
- 48GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 614 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 67
M5 Pro 64GB
- Memory
- 64GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 307 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 16
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 | M5 Max 48GB | M5 Pro 64GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 27B | 22.3 t/sQ6_K | 9.7 t/sQ8_0 |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 44.2 t/sQ2_K |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 88.4 t/sQ5_K_M | 30.6 t/sQ8_0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 22.3 t/sQ6_K | 9.7 t/sQ8_0 |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 43.2 t/sQ8_0 | 26.2 t/sQ8_0 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M5 Max 48GB · M5 Pro 64GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M5 Max 48GB · M5 Pro 64GB