Can MacBook Pro M5 Max 36 GB run LFM2.5 24B-A2B?
36 GB unified · 460 GB/s memory bandwidth · LFM2.5 24B-A2B has 24B parameters (2B active per token).
Short answer
Yes, excellent for chat and acceptable or better for every workload we test.
Best quantization for chat: Q4_K_M (14 GB of weights) on LM Studio. Generation: 130–220 tok/s, leaving about 14 GB free for your other apps.
How it rates for each workload
Same model and machine, different jobs. Agents and long documents send far bigger prompts than chat, so they need much more speed and memory.
| Workload | Verdict | Quant | Generation | First reply | Context | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatwith Open WebUI | Excellent | Q4_K_M | 130–220 tok/s | under 1 s | 8K | Details |
| Coding questionswith Continue | Excellent | Q4_K_M | 130–210 tok/s | under 1 s | 16K | Details |
| Coding in a repositorywith Aider | Acceptable | Q4_K_M | 110–180 tok/s | ≈2 s | 32K | Details |
| Agentic codingwith OpenCode | Acceptable | Q4_K_M | 100–170 tok/s | ≈3 s | 32K | Details |
| Long documents (64K)with Open WebUI | Excellent | Q4_K_M | 75–120 tok/s | ≈8 s | 64K | Details |
Speeds are bandwidth-based estimates; no direct benchmark exists for this pair. “First reply” is the time to read the workload’s opening prompt. How we calculate
Other models for MacBook Pro M5 Max 36 GB
The best-rated models for chat on this machine.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B95–160 tok/sExcellent
- Gemma 4 26B-A4B65–110 tok/sExcellent
- Qwen3.5 35B-A3B95–160 tok/sExcellent
- gpt-oss-20b80–130 tok/sExcellent
- GLM-4.7-Flash (30B-A3B)95–150 tok/sExcellent
- Qwen3 30B-A3B Instruct 250780–130 tok/sExcellent
Cheapest machines for LFM2.5 24B-A2B
Hardware rated comfortable or better for chat, lowest price first.
- Mac mini M4 24 GB$999 · 45–60 tok/sComfortable
- Mac mini M6 24 GB$1,299 · 50–85 tok/sComfortable
- Laptop · Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Radeon 890M) · 32 GB$1,300 · 35–60 tok/sExcellent
- Laptop · Core Ultra 7 258V (Arc 140V) · 32 GB$1,300 · 30–50 tok/sExcellent
- Mac mini M4 32 GB$1,399 · 45–60 tok/sExcellent
- MacBook Air M4 24 GB$1,399 · 45–60 tok/sComfortable
Different tool, context size or workload?
These pages use typical settings. The full check models your exact setup.