Mac Studio, M5 Max, 48GB vs Mac Studio, M5 Max, 128GB
Both hold Gemma-3-27B at Q8_0, and Mac Studio, M5 Max, 128GB is not meaningfully faster — an est. 13.9 tok/s against 13.9. Buy Mac Studio, M5 Max, 48GB and keep the $2,000.
- Fit
- Fits
- Fits
- Headroom
- 12GB
- 88GB
- Est. speed
- 13.9 tok/s
- 13.9 tok/s
- Cheapest today
- $3,099 at Apple
- $5,099 at Apple
- Per GB of memory
- $65
- $40
- Memory
- 48GB unified memory
- 128GB unified memory
- Usable for a model
- 44GB
- 120GB
- Memory bandwidth
- 614GB/s
- 614GB/s
- Storage
- 512GB
- 512GB
- Lowest recorded
- $3,099 in 47d
- $5,099 in 47d
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
- Qwen3-235B-A22BWon't fitWon't fit
- DeepSeek-V3Won't fitWon't fit
- Llama-3.3-70BWon't fitFits
- gpt-oss-120bWon't fitWon't fit
- Mistral-Large-2411Won't fitWon't fit
- Llama-4-Scout-17B-16EWon't fitTight
- Qwen3-32BFitsFits
- Gemma-3-27BFitsFits
- gpt-oss-20bFitsFits
- Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128EWon't fitWon't fit
- Llama-4-BehemothWon't fitWon't fit
- Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-InstructWon't fitWon't fit
- Kimi-K2-InstructWon't fitWon't fit
- GLM-4.6Won't fitWon't fit
- DeepSeek-R1Won't fitWon't fit
- MiniMax-M2Won't fitWon't fit
- Qwen3-30B-A3BFitsFits
- Qwen3-4BFitsFits
- Devstral-Small-2507FitsFits
- Phi-4FitsFits
- Gemma-3n-E4BFitsFits
- Qwen3-VL-8B-InstructFitsFits
- Qwen3.5-35B-A3BFitsFits
- Qwen3.6-27BFitsFits
- Qwen3-Coder-NextWon't fitFits
- DeepSeek-V4-FlashWon't fitWon't fit
- DeepSeek-V4-ProWon't fitWon't fit
- Gemma-4-26B-A4BFitsFits
- Gemma-4-31BFitsFits
- Gemma-4-12BFitsFits
Every model we track at Q8_0. The rows where the two boxes agree are dimmed, because they are not what you are choosing between.