A100 80GB SXM4 vs Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB for Local LLMs

The A100 80GB SXM4 has about 149% more memory bandwidth (2,039 vs 819 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 149% faster on the A100 80GB SXM4. The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 46 of 61 models (96 vs 80 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB but not the A100 80GB SXM4: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $15,000 for the A100 80GB SXM4 vs $3,999 for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB. MSRP is a launch list price, not live retail — Amazon prices move; click through for the current price. Not retail-shoppable: A100 80GB SXM4 (datacenter-class; cloud rental is the realistic way to use it). In the Q4/8K head-to-head below (54 shared models), the A100 80GB SXM4 posts the higher tok/s in 53 rows vs 1. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	A100 80GB SXM4	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Vendor	NVIDIA	Apple
VRAM	80 GB	96 GB
Memory type	HBM2e	LPDDR5
Memory bandwidth	2,039 GB/s	819 GB/s
TDP	400 W	480 W
MSRP (list)	$15,000	$3,999
Buy	—	Search Amazon (affiliate)

MSRP is the launch list price, not live retail. Buy links are Amazon affiliate links — the price after you click is the live price.

Q4 / 8K head-to-head — top 15 of 54 shared models

Model	Params (B)	A100 80GB SXM4 tok/s	A100 80GB SXM4 fits	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB tok/s	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	1621.9 est.	Yes	651.5 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	1297.5 est.	Yes	521.2 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	1081.3 est.	Yes	434.3 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	648.8 est.	Yes	260.6 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	432.5 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	432.5 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	432.5 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	432.5 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	432.5 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	432.5 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	405.5 est.	Yes	154.6 measured	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	360.4 est.	Yes	115.5 measured	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	341.5 est.	Yes	137.2 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	341.5 est.	Yes	137.2 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	332.7 est.	Yes	133.6 est.	Yes	A100 80GB SXM4

est. = bandwidth-based estimate; measured = curated real benchmark that overrides the estimate. Fits = weights + KV(8K) + 1 GB overhead ≤ 95% of VRAM.

Fit coverage at Q4 / 8K

	A100 80GB SXM4	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Catalog models that fit	46 of 61	47 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	—	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)

A100 80GB SXM4 details → · Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB details →