Correction, 18 October 2026. This post was first published in March 2026 and has been rewritten from the LLMCheck index. Earlier versions said the M5 Max decodes 25–35% faster than the M4 Max (the bandwidth gain, and the index’s estimate, is about 12%), gave its bandwidth as ~600 GB/s (Apple: 614), and put a 4-bit 70B model at 15–25 tok/s on an M5 Max, above the chip’s memory-bandwidth ceiling of about 15 tok/s for that model. They also described LLMCheck as benchmarking hardware: LLMCheck runs no tests of its own. Every figure below is an estimate, a published figure or a community run, and is marked as such. The page now also covers the former “Mac Studio M4 Max vs MacBook Pro M5 Max” comparison.
The short answer
Token generation (decode) on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth: every new token reads the model’s active weights from memory once. The M5 Max has about 12% more bandwidth than the M4 Max, so for the same model at the same quantization it writes about 12% faster. The M5 generation’s larger change is the Neural Accelerator Apple added to every GPU core, which speeds up prompt processing (prefill), the step that reads your prompt before the first token appears.
| M4 Max | M5 Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Memory bandwidth, 40-core GPU | 546 GB/s | 614 GB/s |
| Memory bandwidth, 32-core GPU | 410 GB/s | 460 GB/s |
| Maximum unified memory | 128 GB | 128 GB |
| Matrix hardware in the GPU | — | A Neural Accelerator in every GPU core |
| Decode, same model and quant | baseline | about +12% (the bandwidth ratio) |
| LLM prompt processing (Apple’s figures) | baseline | up to 4× (MacBook Pro); 3.9× (Mac Studio, LM Studio) |
| Mac Studio starting price (US) | $1,999 at launch (March 2025) | $2,499 (August 2026) |
Sources: Apple’s MacBook Pro announcement (3 March 2026) and Mac Studio announcement (25 August 2026), the current Mac Studio specifications and the 2025 Mac Studio specifications. Apple’s prompt-processing multiples come from its own testing, and its footnotes do not name the model, quantization or prompt length.
Decode: about 12% faster
The table gives the index’s figure for each model on the 40-core-GPU version of each chip, at 4-bit unless the model’s smallest Mac build is lower. Every speed carries its provenance mark; most M4 Max figures are estimates, because few people publish fully specified M4 Max runs of current models.
| Model | Type | Index min. RAM | M4 Max (546 GB/s) | M5 Max (614 GB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B | MoE, 3B active | 24 GB | estimated~105 tok/s | sourced118 tok/s |
| Gemma 4 26B-A4B | MoE, 3.8B active | 18 GB | estimated~101 tok/s | sourced107 tok/s |
| KAT-Coder-V2.5 | MoE, 3B active | 24 GB | community74 tok/s | community89 tok/s |
| Qwen3.8-27B | dense | 19 GB | estimated~26 tok/s | estimated~29 tok/s |
| Gemma 4 31B | dense | 24 GB | estimated~23 tok/s | estimated~26 tok/s |
| Llama 3.3 70B | dense | 44 GB | estimated~12 tok/s | sourced13 tok/s |
| GPT-oss 120B | MoE, 5.1B active | 62 GB | estimated~69 tok/s | sourced76 tok/s |
| Qwen 3.5 122B-A10B | MoE, 10B active | 65 GB | estimated~39 tok/s | community43 tok/s |
| Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | MoE, 6B active | 120 GB | estimated~43 tok/s | community46 tok/s |
The 70B ceiling. A 4-bit Llama 3.3 70B is about 40 GB of weights, and decode cannot read them faster than the memory allows: 614 GB/s ÷ 40 GB is about 15 tok/s on an M5 Max, about 14 on an M4 Max. tbreak’s Mac Studio M5 Max review published 13.1 tok/s for that model (4-bit, MLX, 41.2 GB peak memory), about 85% of the ceiling. Any page that promises 20+ tok/s for a 4-bit dense 70B on either chip is wrong.
Measured gaps run a little wider than 12%, for software reasons. KAT-Coder-V2.5 is the only current model with a community run on both chips: 89.3 tok/s on an M5 Max (oMLX, OptiQ 4-bit, 1K-token prompt) against 74.2 on an M4 Max (LM Studio, quant not stated). That 20% gap mixes two apps and two quantizations. Two published MLX runs of Qwen 3 30B-A3B show 19%: 109.7 tok/s on an M4 Max (arXiv 2601.19139, 4-bit) and 130.6 on a Mac Studio M5 Max (tbreak, quant not stated), from different studies and MLX versions. Neither pair is a controlled test, so the index keeps the bandwidth ratio as its estimate and treats newer runtimes as a separate gain that also reaches the M4 Max.
Check the GPU core count, not just the generation
Both chips come in two versions, and the cheaper one has less bandwidth. The 32-core-GPU M5 Max runs at 460 GB/s, which is less than the 546 GB/s of a 40-core M4 Max. On a dense model, where every token reads all the weights, a full M4 Max out-decodes a binned M5 Max:
| Model | M4 Max 32-core (410 GB/s) | M5 Max 32-core (460 GB/s) | M4 Max 40-core (546 GB/s) | M5 Max 40-core (614 GB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8-27B (dense) | estimated~19 tok/s | estimated~22 tok/s | estimated~26 tok/s | estimated~29 tok/s |
| Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B (MoE) | estimated~94 tok/s | estimated~100 tok/s | estimated~105 tok/s | sourced118 tok/s |
Binned configurations are always estimated in the index: measured runs come from full-bandwidth chips, and a binned figure is scaled from the nearest one. The small mixture-of-experts models are less sensitive to bandwidth, because a fixed per-token overhead dominates their decode time. The base Mac Studio M5 Max (36 GB) and the base MacBook Pro M5 Max both use the 32-core GPU; the 40-core GPU and its 614 GB/s are a configuration upgrade. See the 36 GB Mac Studio M5 Max ranking for what that configuration runs.
Prompt processing: where the M5 Max pulls ahead
Before the first token, the model reads your whole prompt. That step is compute-bound, not bandwidth-bound, and it is the work the M5 generation’s Neural Accelerators speed up. Apple quotes “up to 4x” faster LLM prompt processing for the MacBook Pro M5 Max than the M4 Max (testing in January and February 2026), and 3.9× for the Mac Studio M5 Max in LM Studio (testing in July 2026). Apple does not publish the model, quantization or prompt length behind either figure, so treat them as best cases.
For scale, tbreak’s Mac Studio M5 Max review published 5,402 tok/s of prompt processing for Qwen 3 30B-A3B in MLX: a 10,000-token prompt is read in about two seconds. No fully specified M4 Max run of the same setup is published, so the index has no prefill ratio for the pair.
Apple’s own M5 Ultra data shows the same split between the two phases. In Apple Machine Learning Research’s tables (15 October 2026; Qwen3.8-27B in BF16, 8,192-token prompt, mlx_lm.benchmark), the M5 Ultra decodes 1.58× faster than the M3 Ultra, close to their 1.5× bandwidth ratio, while time to first token falls from 18.2 s to 4.1 s, 4.4× faster. If your prompts are long (retrieval over documents, a coding agent reading a repository, long chat histories), prefill is the wait you notice, and that is where an M5 Max earns its price.
What to run on a 64 or 128 GB Max
Both chips hold the same models, so the picks are the same. From the index’s per-Mac rankings (MacBook Pro M5 Max 128 GB, Mac Studio M4 Max 128 GB), with M5 Max figures:
- Any Max, 36 GB and up: Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B, the index’s #1 and its pick for a 64 GB M5 Max (sourced118 tok/s on an M5 Max), and KAT-Coder-V2.5 for agentic coding (community89 tok/s). For the strongest dense model, Qwen3.8-27B: slower (estimated~29 tok/s) but the higher capability score.
- 64 GB: GPT-oss 120B in OpenAI’s MXFP4 format (sourced76 tok/s; its minimum is 62 GB, so close other apps) or Qwen3-Coder-Next (estimated~84 tok/s). A 4-bit Llama 3.3 70B also fits (sourced13 tok/s), but newer models beat it on capability.
- 128 GB: Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, the index’s 128 GB tier pick (community46 tok/s), Qwen 3.5 122B-A10B (community43 tok/s) and DeepSeek V4 Flash at 2-bit (community39 tok/s). Neither chip runs MiMo-V2.6-Flash (the index’s #1 from 18 to 24 October 2026), which needs at least 170 GB; that takes a Mac Studio with an Ultra chip. Both run the current #1, Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B, which needs 24 GB.
Mac Studio or MacBook Pro?
Until August 2026 the M5 Max came only in the MacBook Pro, so the practical choice was a newer laptop or an older desktop, the Mac Studio M4 Max. Since 25 August the Mac Studio ships with the M5 Max, so you can buy the newer chip in either shape.
- Mac Studio M5 Max: from $2,499 with 36 GB and the 32-core GPU (460 GB/s); the 40-core GPU (614 GB/s) comes with 48, 64 or 128 GB.
- MacBook Pro M5 Max: from $3,599 (14-inch) or $3,899 (16-inch), Apple’s US prices from March 2026, also starting with the 32-core GPU.
- Mac Studio M4 Max: launched in March 2025 at $1,999 with 36 GB and the 32-core GPU (410 GB/s). A 40-core M4 Max at a real discount still runs everything an M5 Max runs, about 12% slower at decode.
The same chip in the same configuration decodes at the same speed in both shapes. What changes is sustained load: a laptop has a smaller cooling and power budget, and an always-on agent or a small team server is better placed on a desktop that stays quiet under load. No published, fully specified run compares hours-long sessions on the two shapes, so the index has no throttling figure. Decode is limited by memory bandwidth more than clock speed, which should keep any laptop penalty small for chat-style use. Buy the MacBook Pro if you need local models away from a desk; otherwise the Mac Studio costs about $1,100 less at the starting configurations, though the laptop’s price also buys a display, keyboard and battery.
Verdict: who should upgrade
- Upgrade from an M4 Max if long prompts are your bottleneck: retrieval over many documents, coding agents that read whole repositories, long chat histories. Prefill is where the M5 Max is several times faster.
- Keep your M4 Max if you mostly chat or generate. A 12% decode gain is about 3 tok/s on a dense 27B model, and the memory ceiling (128 GB) is unchanged, so no new model class opens up.
- Buying new: get the 40-core GPU if speed matters, because the 32-core M5 Max decodes slower than a 40-core M4 Max. Choose the Mac Studio for a desk and the MacBook Pro for portability.
- Need more than 128 GB or more speed? The Mac Studio M5 Ultra doubles the bandwidth to 1,228 GB/s and holds up to 512 GB; see M5 Ultra vs M3 Ultra vs M5 Max.
Every figure on this page is in the benchmarks table with its source, and the method behind the estimates is on the methodology page. For the step down, see M5 Pro vs M5 Max.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much faster is the M5 Max than the M4 Max for local LLMs?
About 12% faster at decode, the ratio of their memory bandwidth (614 vs 546 GB/s on the 40-core-GPU versions). According to the LLMCheck index, Qwen3.8-27B goes from about 26 to about 29 tok/s (estimated, 4-bit). Prompt processing gains are much larger: Apple quotes up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing for the MacBook Pro M5 Max than the M4 Max.
How many tokens per second does an M5 Max get on a 70B model?
About 13 tok/s for a 4-bit dense 70B. tbreak's Mac Studio M5 Max review published 13.1 tok/s for Llama 3.3 70B (4-bit, MLX), and the LLMCheck index estimates about 12 tok/s on an M4 Max. Neither chip can pass about 15 tok/s on that model: 614 GB/s divided by roughly 40 GB of weights is the ceiling.
Is the cheapest M5 Max faster than an M4 Max?
Not at decode. The 32-core-GPU M5 Max has 460 GB/s, less than the 546 GB/s of a 40-core M4 Max, so the LLMCheck index estimates it slower on the same dense model: about 22 against 26 tok/s for Qwen3.8-27B (estimated, 4-bit). It still processes prompts faster, thanks to the Neural Accelerators in its GPU cores.
Should I buy a Mac Studio M5 Max or a MacBook Pro M5 Max for local AI?
The chip is the same, so the same configuration decodes at the same speed. The Mac Studio M5 Max starts at $2,499 against $3,599 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 Max (Apple US prices), and a desktop suits agents that run for hours. Buy the MacBook Pro only if you need to run models away from a desk.
Is it worth upgrading from an M4 Max to an M5 Max for LLMs?
Only if prompt processing is your bottleneck: long documents, large codebases, retrieval. For chat-length prompts the 12% decode gain is small, and both chips top out at 128 GB, so no new models become runnable. For more memory or speed, the Mac Studio M5 Ultra has 1,228 GB/s and up to 512 GB.
Can the M5 Max and M4 Max run the same models?
Yes. Both top out at 128 GB of unified memory. On 128 GB they run Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, Qwen 3.5 122B-A10B and DeepSeek V4 Flash at 2-bit; on 64 GB, models up to GPT-oss 120B. Neither runs MiMo-V2.6-Flash, which needs at least 170 GB, so a Mac Studio with an Ultra chip.