Local AI Deals

Mac Studio, M4 Max, 64GB, refurbished vs Mac Studio, M5 Max, 48GB

Both hold Gemma-3-27B at Q4_K_M. Mac Studio, M5 Max, 48GB decodes an est. 24.5 tok/s against 21.8, and costs $50 more — $18.44 per extra token per second. Worth it if you read the output as it arrives; not if you queue jobs.

Fit
Fits
Fits
Headroom
39GB
25GB
Est. speed
21.8 tok/s
24.5 tok/s
Cheapest today
$3,049 at Apple Certified Refurbished
$3,099 at Apple
Per GB of memory
$48
$65
Memory
64GB unified memory
48GB unified memory
Usable for a model
59GB
44GB
Memory bandwidth
546GB/s
614GB/s
Storage
1TB
512GB
Lowest recorded
$3,049 in 3d
$3,099 in 3d

Fit, headroom and speed are computed from each vendor’s published bandwidth and the model’s own size at 8K context. Prices are the cheapest listing we could read on each seller’s page. The arithmetic is here.

Where they actually differ

Every model we track at Q4_K_M. The rows where the two boxes agree are dimmed, because they are not what you are choosing between.