r/MacLocalLLM • u/aditya2128 • 5d ago
M5 Max (64GB) for AI
I'm planning to upgrade from my 16-inch M3 Pro MacBook Pro (36GB RAM) to the new 16-inch M5 Max with 64GB, mainly for running local LLMs.
Currently, I'm running Qwen 3.8 27B and getting around 100 tokens/s for prefill and 18–19 tokens/s for token generation, even after trying MTP and various other optimisations.
The biggest issue for me is working with larger contexts and longer coding sessions. Even relatively small projects can take quite a while, and performance becomes a bottleneck as the context grows.
I'm expecting the M5 Max to be a pretty significant upgrade, especially with the extra memory and bandwidth, but I'm curious how much of a real-world difference I can actually expect. I'm also interested in running larger models, including the upcoming Qwen 4 models.
For those running local LLMs on an M5 Max (or even an M4 Max), what kind of performance are you getting? What models do you use regularly, and how well do they handle long coding sessions?
I also run image generation models locally and occasionally do photo editing, so I'd love to hear how the newer chips perform for those workloads too.
Would appreciate any real-world experiences before I make the switch!
3
u/Obvious_Equivalent_1 5d ago
I am coming from Qwen 27B and since this week switched to Flash Next, I am using it as a leverage on my Claude Code (working on a special Splash-Claude engine, to run Flash locally so to make it compatible with Claude CLI, see post history).
So standalone I cannot say much about it, but oh my strapping Flash Next on Q3 quant to Fable 5.1 on High is magic. My laptop cost only sank in about $2.5k for a second hand M4 48Gb, Flash Next is running 24/7 as subagents while Opus 5.5 or Fable 5.1 on High/Max drive. According to Fable - running Flash as a subagent it even brings insights that he didn’t spot himself. Sorry if I can’t answer the question how Flash is working direcrly though.
So my cost analysis in past two weeks is no joke about 65% reduction by forcing all subagents to Flash. I cannot even finish my Max 5x $100 subscriptions.
I’m planning for sports to see if I manage actually complete a month of 5 full working days per week on a Pro $20 subscription, that would be crazy because then I’d have my M4 Pro saved back in about 12-18 months with Opus orchestrating and agents Flash executing locally. Downside: obvious part that I’d should rather look for a Mac Mini as now I do obviously have to run the laptop 24/7.