M5 Max 48GB vs AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB for local LLMs
66 reports on the M5 Max 48GB and 13 on the AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3 8B at 4-bit, the M5 Max 48GB has 104.2 generation tokens/s (2 runs); prompt processing 2947.6 tokens/s (2 runs); the AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB has 98.8 generation tokens/s (one run); prompt processing 4245.0 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 about the same on both (614 GB/s on the M5 Max 48GB, 640 on the AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB).
- Memory
- 48GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 614 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 66
- Memory
- 16GB
- Memory bandwidth
- 640 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 195 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 13
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 Max 48GB | AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 8B4-bit | 104.22 runsPP 2947.6 (2 runs)llama.cpp, MLXcontext not stated | 98.8one runPP 4245.0 (one run)llama.cpp512 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 | M5 Max 48GB | AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 8B | 30.5 t/sFP16 | 54.2 t/sQ6_K |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 22.3 t/sQ6_K | 41.7 t/sQ2_K |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 88.4 t/sQ5_K_M | 138.0 t/sQ2_K |
| 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 | 41.7 t/sQ2_K |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 43.2 t/sQ8_0 | 93.0 t/sQ3_K_S |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M5 Max 48GB · AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M5 Max 48GB · AMD RX 9070 XT 16GB