▸ APPLE· M5 MAX

Apple M5 Max (48GB)

Running LLMs on the Apple M5 Max (48GB) — the long read: which models fit at which quantisation, and the settings worth changing. · Or what a budget buys

USABLE MEMORY

36 GB

HIGH-END

BANDWIDTH

614

GB/S

MODELS Q4

342/449

76%

7B Q4 SPEED

~78

BLAZING

▸ MODEL COVERAGE @ Q476% OF ALL

▸ ESTIMATED SPEED· BY MODEL SIZE @ Q4

Average speeds at Q4 quantization. Actual performance varies by model architecture and context length.

~182

TOK/S

~78

TOK/S

14B

~39

TOK/S

32B

~17

TOK/S

70B

—

39.4GB NEEDED

▸ MEASURED RIG REPORTS

We rent the machine and time every model on it: decode, VRAM peak, concurrency, watts and cost per million tokens. Yours may already be one of them — and two are free to read in full.

SEE THE REPORTS →

▸ SPECIFICATIONS

USABLE MEMORY

36 GB of 48

BANDWIDTH

614 GB/s

FP16 COMPUTE

18 TFLOPS

TDP

45W

MEMORY

Unified

ARCHITECTURE

M5 Max

282

FAST MODELS · >30 TOK/S

Real-time chat speed

342

USABLE · >10 TOK/S

Comfortable for all tasks

342

TOTAL COMPATIBLE

Fit in usable memory at Q4

▸ DON’T WANT TO BUY?

Test M5 Max (48GB) (or anything bigger) without committing. Pay by the second, cancel anytime.

Rent on Vast.ai →Or RunPod →

Spin up in ~60s. Pay by the second. Cancel anytime.

Some links are affiliate links — we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps keep FitMyLLM free and independent.

▸ COMPATIBLE MODELS· 342

Falcon-H1R Tiny 90M0.09B

FALCON·256K CTX· CHAT· REASONING

nomic-embed-text-v1.5 100M0.14B

EMBEDDING·8K CTX· CHAT

SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION

Snowflake Arctic Embed M v2.00.305B

EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL

bge-large-en-v1.5 335M0.335B

EMBEDDING·1K CTX· CHAT

mxbai-embed-large-v10.335B

EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING

Snowflake Arctic Embed L0.335B

EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING

LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE

GPT-2 Medium 345M0.38B

SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION

FALCON·128K CTX· CHAT

EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING

Snowflake Arctic Embed L v2.00.568B

EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL

Qwen3-Embedding 0.6B0.6B

EMBEDDING·32K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL

Falcon-H1R Tiny 0.6B0.6B

FALCON·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING

Falcon Perception 0.6B0.6B

FALCON·4K CTX· VISION

LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE

QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING

GPT-2 Large 774M0.81B

QWEN·256K CTX· CHAT· CODING· MULTILINGUAL

OTHER·32K CTX· CHAT· VISION

MINICPM·128K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· MULTILINGUAL

LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking1.2B

LFM·122K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· TOOL_USE

LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· MULTILINGUAL

OTHER·256K CTX· CHAT· VISION

DeepSeek Coder 1.3B1.35B

DEEPSEEK·16K CTX· CODING

PHI·2K CTX· CHAT· CODING

LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· MULTILINGUAL

▸ NEXT STEP

Get personalized recommendations.

See ranked models with benchmark scores, run commands, and precise speed estimates for your Apple M5 Max (48GB).

▸Find models for Apple M5 Max (48GB)Compare with other GPUs

WHAT THIS CARD IS WORTH

M5 Max (48GB) holds 342 of the models in our catalogue and is, in practice, a IQ4_XS card — the largest it takes is Jamba 2 Mini at IQ4_XS.

TOKENS/SEC PER $100

—

8B at Q4_K_M, so cards compare like for like

USABLE MEMORY PER $100

—

what memory costs on this card

THE BIGGEST IT TAKES

Jamba 2 Mini52B · IQ4_XS32.0 GB40 tok/sEST

Jamba 1.5 Mini 52B51.6B · IQ4_XS31.8 GB40 tok/sEST

Kimi-Linear-48B-A3B48B · Q4_K_M32.0 GB146 tok/sEST

Nemotron-H 47B47B · Q4_K_S31.5 GB10 tok/sEST

Mixtral-8x7B46.7B · Q4_K_M31.5 GB34 tok/sEST

Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-DPO46.7B · Q4_K_M31.5 GB34 tok/sEST

Dolphin 2.6 Mixtral 8x7B46.7B · Q4_K_M31.5 GB34 tok/sEST

Phi-3.5 MoE 42B41.9B · Q5_K_S32.2 GB58 tok/sEST

AGAINST CARDS OF SIMILAR MEMORY

M1 Ultra (64GB)48 GB$2,4992.9 tok/s per $100

M2 Ultra (64GB)48 GB$2,9992.4 tok/s per $100

M4 Max (64GB)48 GB$2,8991.9 tok/s per $100

M2 Max (64GB)48 GB$2,2992.0 tok/s per $100

M5 Max (48GB)36 GB——

Neighbours in memory rather than in price: memory decides whether a card can do the job at all, so two cards of the same size at different prices is the comparison you are making. Ordered by memory, then bandwidth — not by the value column, which is worked out from bandwidth and price alone and therefore rewards a cheap card whatever its software stack does to that bandwidth in practice. Read it as one input, not as a ranking.

▸ DEVICE UNDER TEST

Apple M5 Max (48GB) — 48 GB unified, 36 GB usable.

▸ APPLE M5 MAX (48GB) SPEC

BRAND: Apple
UNIFIED MEMORY: 48 GB
USABLE BY A MODEL: 36 GB
BANDWIDTH: 614 GB/s
FP16 COMPUTE: 18 TFLOPS
TDP: 45 W
ARCHITECTURE: M5 Max

▸ AI CAPABILITY

342/ 449 models @ Q4

With 36 GB of its 48 GB reaching a model and 614 GB/s bandwidth, this machine handles models up to 48B parameters.

Speed ≈ bandwidth / model_size × efficiency. A 7B model at Q4 runs at ~70 tok/s.

RENT IT — LIVE PRICES

Checking what the clouds are charging…

§ 01TOP MODELS FOR APPLE M5 MAX (48GB)

342 FIT · SHOWING 20

MODEL	SIZE	VRAM Q4	TOK/S	AVG
Kimi-Linear-48B-A3B	48B	29.8 GB	182	26.6
Nemotron-H 47B	47B	29.2 GB	12	84.6
Mixtral-8x7B	46.7B	29.0 GB	42	18.8
Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-DPO	46.7B	29.0 GB	42	27.4
Dolphin 2.6 Mixtral 8x7B	46.7B	29.0 GB	42	23.8
Phi-3.5 MoE 42B	41.9B	26.1 GB	83	56.7
Falcon 40B	40B	24.9 GB	14	20.9
InternVL3 38B	38B	23.7 GB	14	78.9
Seed-OSS 36B Instruct	36B	22.5 GB	15	54.4
c4ai-command-r-v01 35B	35B	21.9 GB	16	27.5
Qwen 3.5 35B A3B	35B	21.9 GB	182	53.3
Qwen 3.6 35B A3B	35B	21.9 GB	182	53.9
Nous Capybara 34B	34.4B	21.5 GB	16	42.0
Yi-1.5 34B	34.4B	21.5 GB	16	45.3
Falcon-H1 34B	34B	21.3 GB	16	66.1
CodeLlama 34B	34B	21.3 GB	16	25.4
Nous Hermes 2 34B	34B	21.3 GB	16	47.0
Phind CodeLlama 34B	34B	21.3 GB	16	68.1
LLaVA-1.6 Yi 34B	34B	21.3 GB	16	47.4
WizardCoder Python 34B	34B	21.3 GB	16	73.2