Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified)
36 GB Unified · 546 GB/s
From
$2,999
Estimated street price
VRAM
36 GB
Bandwidth
546 GB/s
TDP
75W
Models
30
Tier
Power
The Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) with 36 GB unified memory can handle 30 AI models across coding, ai_coding, ai_building. Best performance: Llama 3.2 1B Instruct at 150 tok/s (excellent). For AI coding workflows, it supports the Power AI Coding tier, running 32B coding models at good quality. Current price: approximately $2,999.
Source: OwnRig methodology
36 GB
546 GB/s
Unified
75W
40
MacBook Pro 16", Mac Studio
Builder Capability: Power AI Coding
Runs 32B coding models at good quality. Can handle coding model + embeddings concurrently.
Inference Backends
The software stacks that matter most for real-world inference on this device.
Metal
productionPrimary Apple Silicon backend across MLX and llama.cpp workloads.
What it can run
30 models| Arcee Trinity Mini 26B | Q8_0 | 28 tok/s | Good |
| Arcee Trinity Nano 6B | Q8_0 | 118 tok/s | Excellent |
| Code Llama 34B Instruct | Q4_K_M | 14 tok/s | Good |
| DeepSeek Coder V2 Lite 16B | Q5_K_M | 35 tok/s | Good |
| DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 7B | Q4_K_M | 52 tok/s | Excellent |
| DeepSeek V3 | Q2_K | – | Not viable |
| Gemma 2 27B Instruct | Q5_K_M | 15 tok/s | Good |
| Gemma 3 27B | Q5_K_M | 15 tok/s | Good |
| Gemma 4 26B-A4B | Q8_0 | 84 tok/s | Excellent |
| Gemma 4 31B | Q6_K | 15 tok/s | Acceptable |
| Gemma 4 E2B | Q8_0 | 82 tok/s | Excellent |
| Gemma 4 E4B | Q8_0 | 50 tok/s | Good |
| GigaChat Lightning 10B | Q8_0 | 55 tok/s | Excellent |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | Q8_0 | 55 tok/s | Excellent |
| Llama 3.2 11B Vision | Q8_0 | 42 tok/s | Excellent |
| Llama 3.2 1B Instruct | Q8_0 | 150 tok/s | Excellent |
| Llama 3.2 3B Instruct | Q8_0 | 100 tok/s | Excellent |
| Mixtral 8x7B Instruct | Q4_K_M | 20 tok/s | Good |
| NVIDIA Nemotron-3-super-120B-A12B | Q2_K | 9 tok/s | Marginal |
| Phi-4 14B | Q5_K_M | 35 tok/s | Good |
| Phi-4 Mini | Q8_0 | 90 tok/s | Excellent |
| Qwen 2.5 14B Instruct | Q5_K_M | 38 tok/s | Good |
| Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct | Q5_K_M | 18 tok/s | Good |
| Qwen3-14B Instruct | Q8_0 | 25 tok/s | Good |
| Qwen3.5-122B-A10B | Q3_K_M | 38 tok/s | Good |
| Qwen3.5-27B | Q8_0 | 16 tok/s | Acceptable |
| Qwen3.5-397B (MoE) | Q2_K | – | Not viable |
| Qwen3.6-27B | Q8_0 | 16 tok/s | Acceptable |
| Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large | FP16 | – | Good |
| Whisper Large V3 Turbo | FP16 | – | Excellent |
Showing 30 of 30 entries
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What AI models can Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) run?
- The Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) can run 30 AI models. Top performers include Llama 3.2 1B Instruct, Arcee Trinity Nano 6B, Llama 3.2 3B Instruct. See the full compatibility table above for speeds and quality ratings.
- Is Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) good for AI coding?
- Yes. With 36 GB, the Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) supports the Power AI Coding tier: large coding models at good quality.
- How much VRAM does Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) have?
- The Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) has 36 GB of unified memory with 546 GB/s bandwidth.
- Can Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) run 70B models?
- Yes. The Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) can run 70B parameter models in VRAM at quantized quality.
- Is Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) worth it for AI?
- At $2,999, the Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) offers 36 GB VRAM and runs 30 AI models. It handles local AI inference well.
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See every AI model it supports, expected performance, and how to build around it.