Mac Studio, M5 Max, 48GB vs Mac Studio, M5 Max, 128GB
Only Mac Studio, M5 Max, 128GB holds Llama-4-Scout-17B-16E at Q8_0. Mac Studio, M5 Max, 48GB is 74GB short. It costs $2,000 more, and a box that cannot load the model is not a saving.
- Fit
- Won't fit
- Tight
- Headroom
- −74GB
- 1GB
- Est. speed
- —
- 17.0 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.