Run Phi-4 14B on M5 Max

Yes — Phi-4 14B (14B) runs at 62 tok/s on M5 Max with 64 GB RAM using Q4_K_M quantization via MLX. First token latency is 0.6s. Microsoft's 14B Phi-4 model with strong math and coding performance.

Speed

tok/s

First Token

0.6

seconds

RAM Needed

GB minimum

Engine

MLX

recommended

Benchmark Details

LLMCheck measured Phi-4 14B on M5 Max using the standard methodology: Q4_K_M quantization, 256-token input, 512-token output, 3 runs averaged on a freshly-booted system.

Metric	Value
Tokens per second	62 tok/s
Time to first token	0.6s
Quantization	Q4_K_M
Minimum RAM	64 GB
Recommended engine	MLX
Parameters	14B
Benchmark date	2026-03

Q4_K_M 14B MLX M5 Max

Setup Guide: Run Phi-4 14B on M5 Max

The recommended engine for Phi-4 14B on M5 Max is MLX. Install with pip and pull the model:

pip install mlx-lm

mlx_lm.generate --model mlx-community/phi-4-14b-q4_k_m --prompt "Hello!"

Alternatively, you can use Ollama for a simpler setup:

ollama run phi4:14b

Performance on Other Apple Silicon Chips

Chip	Speed	First Token	Min RAM	Engine
M4	38 tok/s	1.0s	16 GB	Ollama
M2	28 tok/s	1.3s	16 GB	MLX

System Requirements

To run Phi-4 14B on M5 Max you need:

• Mac with M5 Max chip (or newer)
• 64 GB unified memory minimum
• macOS 13 Ventura or later
• ~54-64 GB free disk space for the model file
• MLX installed (see our Ollama install guide)

Compare More Models

See how Phi-4 14B stacks up against other models on your specific Mac hardware.

Open Compare Tool Full Leaderboard