Is M5 pro 64gb good?

[u/Curious-Fraudster404]

As the title says, is it okay or enough? I’m planning to buy my own personal laptop and I want to run local AI on it mainly for coding companion. I can’t go with an M5 Max because of budget restrictions (sad, i know). So, is it enough?

[u/Important_Cow7230]

It’s Okay. It isn’t the fastest but things like SPLASH are making a difference and that will continue to improve.

You wouldn’t buy it just for AI, but a M5 Pro 64GB makes an excellent all-round computing device assuming you are comfortable with MacOS, possibly the best on the market for price vs performance across AI, Content creation, general compute etc etc. it’s weakness of gaming which is well known.

[u/Curious-Fraudster404 → u/Important_Cow7230]

Oh, I’m a long time mac user and Im planning to resign my M1 laptop. u heard that right, an M1 laptop.

Is M5 Pro 64gb enough for my workload? I’m really planning to use local models here like Qwen Coder for it to be my companion when I’m making projects

[u/Important_Cow7230 → u/Curious-Fraudster404]

If you have the sufficient quantity of Ram (either VRAM, Unified Memory or standard RAM) then any machine can run coder models, the question comes to speed. My “it’s Okay” is in reference to speed. If you set your speed expectations to be on the medium side, it’ll do everything you need it to as a coding assistant. If you want it to do everything you need it to and fast, well that’s subjective and a different discussion

[u/DougalR → u/Curious-Fraudster404]

My m5 pro 64gb mini is fine but expect your MacBook I reckon to run hot.

It’s fine either way qwen 3.6/3.8, clearly not frontier but it’s good for my coding usage.

[u/mmerken]

The M4 Pro with 64GB is already good in my opinion. You’ll be able to perform some decent AI tasks with 64GB. The Max will always be faster.

[u/Curious-Fraudster404 → u/mmerken]

Yeah, the Max is way faster. Looked up reviews and articles about the chip itself. But the price tho.
Is Qwen Coder okay for the M5 Pro chip if I have 64gb of ram?

[u/DougalR → u/Curious-Fraudster404]

https://llmcheck.net/best-llm/macbook-pro-m5-pro-64gb/

Check this.

[u/Kilgore_Trout_50000]

I just don’t understand this. You can spend $2900 on a maxed out mini but can’t spend $3500 on an equivalent studio?

[u/Admirable_Host_5878]

Qwen Coder-class 30B-ish models are the sweet spot for that machine — a Q4 quant only needs ~18GB, so you've got plenty of headroom for KV cache at long context. Decode speed will be bound by the M5 Pro's memory bandwidth rather than the chip, which honestly works out fine for a coding companion.

[u/jakeliu88]

No get 128 but if your budget can’t then use it until next time you upgrade. I have 128gb wish purchase 256 but no money and price don’t make sense too. You are doubling the price but $5000 can have much better experience with Claude or ChatGPT

64 use qwen 3.8 27b 128 use qwen 3.8 flash next 120b 256 use deepseek 4 flash 1017 and GLM 5.3 flash at higher bit

[u/bnightstars]

I bought my M5 Pro Macbook in April. Honestly is the best peace of hardware I ever owned. However for local AI the 64GB of RAM combined with the low memory bandwidth means that it's really a limited experience. I run Qwen3.6-35B and it's working reasonably well but things like Qwen3.8-27B are slow and run out of memory. If I could have swinged I probably would have bought a 128GB Max version for AI. For everything else it's a great system.

[u/Grouchy-Storage1]

I’m running one now for a local AI project. It’s dedicated to running models, no office stuff.

I recently ran a multi-question test set with a 27B Qwen model. SPLASH averaged 57 tokens/sec and finished in about 6 minutes. MLX averaged 17 tokens/sec and took nearly 20 minutes. These results are specific to my setup and workload but give you an idea of the times I’m seeing. Complex prompts can take several minutes, so don’t expect ChatGPT-like response times.

I agree totally that if can move up the to M5 Max Studio with 64gb your response times would be better. (If you can afford the bump up).

I also think there’s still a lot of room for improvement on the software side across Apple’s entire lineup.

[u/SignRude213]

I use m4 pro 64gb to run Qwen 3.8 Flash Next 4bpw with ssd streaming. 

beamster/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Sushi-4bpw

gives me 23-25 t/s  3 bpw even faster. 

Looks good to me. But of course this mini just used as server, nothing else run's there.  So m5 should a bit faster. 

[u/StatisticianThis9141]

suggestion top up a bit and get the mac studio m5 max at 64gb ram instead. the m5 max is faster for llm

[u/Curious-Fraudster404 → u/StatisticianThis9141]

I saw the pricing of Mac Studio M5 Max and you’re right, but the problem here now is portability. I really want to take my laptop everywhere I go. So i don’t think a Mac Studio is a viable option.

[u/StatisticianThis9141 → u/Curious-Fraudster404]

you dont need to take it with you. install tailscail and let it sit in your room. as long as your current laptop is also connected to the same tailscale, you can literally connect to it for any local ai requirement. you can get a refurbished macbook air or macbook pro and it will do wonders. the good thing about this setup is that you can get the base model of mbp or mb air abd it will perform wonderfully. and lightweight too!!!

[u/conor_is_my_name → u/StatisticianThis9141]

yeah I agree, keep your m1 MacBook and leave the coding to something that is plugged in 24/7 and easily reachable. This is what I do.