The Silicon Wager: M4 Pro vs M5 Max — When the Right Machine Changes Everything
TL;DR — Skip to the numbers if you’re in a hurry The wall is real — and hardware-specific Mac mini M4 Pro: hits it at ~18K tokens. Past that, processing a single input can take 20 minutes. MacBook Pro M5 Max: doesn’t hit it until ~45K tokens — 2.5× further. The speed gap is large At 25K tokens: MBP generates output 4.7× faster than the Mini. MBP at 35K tokens is still faster to process than the Mini at 4K tokens. The wall is a memory bandwidth limit, not a bug Mini: a sharp wall — cross it and performance collapses. MBP: a gentle ramp — performance degrades slowly above the limit. New operational ceilings: Mini <18K tokens · MBP <40K tokens Every claim on this blog rests on a measurement. And until today, every measurement rested on one machine: the Mac mini M4 Pro. ...