Can the M5 Max run a 70B model?

Yes. A 70B model at 4-bit needs about 40 GB, and the M5 Max has up to 128 GB. Expect a ceiling of about 16 tokens a second for one chat.

How many tokens per second does the M5 Max get?

For an 8B model at 4-bit, the ceiling is about 136 tokens a second, and real runs reach roughly half to four fifths of it. Bigger models are proportionally slower.

Is the M5 Max good for AI?

For running models locally, memory and bandwidth matter most. The M5 Max has up to 128 GB at 614 GB/s, enough for models up to about 170 billion parameters. It can also earn by running AI work for MLX Network with MLX Node.

M5 Max for local LLMs: memory, speed and what fits

1The specs that matter for AI

Unified memory	128 GB
Memory bandwidth	614 GB/s, or 460 GB/s on the lower configuration
Found in	14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro (2026), Mac Studio (2026)
Dedicated seat for it	Pro Latest seat: mines up to 120 MLX a day

2Which models fit

At 4 bits per weight a model needs a little over half a gigabyte per billion parameters, plus room for its context and macOS. With 128 GB, the M5 Max comfortably holds models up to about 170 billion parameters.

Model at 4-bit	Memory it needs	Fits on the M5 Max
8B model	4.5 GB	Yes
14B model	7.9 GB	Yes
32B model	18 GB	Yes
70B model	39.4 GB	Yes
gpt-oss-120b, mixture-of-experts	65 GB	Yes
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B, mixture-of-experts	223.3 GB	No
DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, mixture-of-experts	316 GB	No

3How fast it runs

Writing text is limited by memory bandwidth: every new token reads the model's active weights once. Dividing the M5 Max's 614 GB/s by the bytes read per token gives the ceiling below. Real runs usually reach about 45% to 80% of it (llama.cpp benchmarks).

Model at 4-bit	Read per token	Ceiling for one chat
8B model	4.5 GB	136 tokens/s
14B model	7.9 GB	78 tokens/s
32B model	18 GB	34 tokens/s
70B model	39.4 GB	16 tokens/s
gpt-oss-120b, mixture-of-experts	2.7 GB	227 tokens/s

M5-generation chips add neural accelerators to the GPU, so they read prompts several times faster than M4: Apple measured the first token arriving 3.3 to 4.1 times sooner with MLX (Apple).

5Compare with other chips

6Questions

Can the M5 Max run a 70B model?: Yes. A 70B model at 4-bit needs about 40 GB, and the M5 Max has up to 128 GB. Expect a ceiling of about 16 tokens a second for one chat.
How many tokens per second does the M5 Max get?: For an 8B model at 4-bit, the ceiling is about 136 tokens a second, and real runs reach roughly half to four fifths of it. Bigger models are proportionally slower.
Is the M5 Max good for AI?: For running models locally, memory and bandwidth matter most. The M5 Max has up to 128 GB at 614 GB/s, enough for models up to about 170 billion parameters. It can also earn by running AI work for MLX Network with MLX Node.

Sources

Apple: M5 Pro and M5 Maxapple.com
Apple: Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultraapple.com