Apple M5 Max

The chip in the Mac Studio and the top 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. The 40-core GPU version has 614 GB/s of memory bandwidth, more than twice any 128 GB mini PC, which makes it the fastest way to run 70B to 120B-class models without a server; the 32-core version has 460 GB/s. In the MacBook Pro, 128 GB requires the 40-core version.

Specifications

Processor

18 cores (6 super + 12 performance)

Graphics

32-core or 40-core Apple GPU with Neural Accelerators

Memory

Unified memory, up to 128 GB

Memory bandwidth

460 to 614 GB/s (theoretical peak)

What it can run with 128 GB

Estimated writing speed with an 8K-token conversation. Estimates, not our tests; see how we estimate.

Models and estimated speed on Apple M5 Max with 128 GB

Model (4-bit)	Tokens/s
Gemma 4 E4B 4.59 GB	75-98
Llama 3.1 8B 4.92 GB	50-64
Qwen3.5 9B 5.68 GB	49-63
Gemma 4 12B 7.12 GB	37-48
gpt-oss 20B 12.11 GB	96-124
Qwen3.8 27B 16.46 GB	16-21
Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B 18.56 GB	110-142
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B 22.13 GB	94-122
Llama 3.3 70B 42.52 GB	6-8
gpt-oss 120B 63.39 GB	68-88

Machines with the Apple M5 Max

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Machines we cover, sorted by memory bandwidth

Machine	Memory	Bandwidth	NPU	Price	Status	Store
Apple Mac Studio (M5 Max, 128 GB) Apple M5 Max, 18-core CPU	128 GB unified	614 GB/s	None	$5,399list price	Researched, not tested	Check Apple
Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5 Max, 128 GB) Apple M5 Max, 18-core CPU	128 GB unified	614 GB/s	None	$6,699list price	Researched, not tested	Check Apple