MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB vs Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB for Local LLMs

The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB has about 1265% more memory bandwidth (819 vs 60 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 1265% faster on the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB. The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 48 vs 11 of 67 models (96 vs 8 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB but not the MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB: Qwen3.5-122B-A10B (122.0B). MSRP is $0 for the MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB 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. In the Q4/8K head-to-head below (36 shared models), the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB posts the higher tok/s in 36 rows vs 0. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Vendor	Apple	Apple
VRAM	8 GB	96 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5X	LPDDR5
Memory bandwidth	60 GB/s	819 GB/s
TDP	20 W	480 W
MSRP (list)	$0	$3,999
Buy	Search Amazon	Search Amazon

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 36 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB tok/s	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB fits	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB tok/s	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits	Winner
MiniCPM5-1B	1.08	70.0 est.	Yes	419.5 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3.5-2B	2.0	37.8 est.	Yes	226.5 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	23.6 est.	Yes	154.6 measured	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	36.0	2.6 est.	No	151.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B	34.7	2.8 est.	No	151.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	2.5 est.	No	151.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	3.3 est.	No	151.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-BF16	30.0	3.5 est.	No	151.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Ornith-1.0-35B	35.0	2.7 est.	No	151.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	25.2	3.9 est.	No	119.2 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	5.7 est.	No	115.5 measured	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Nanbeige4.2-3B	4.0	19.2 est.	Yes	115.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	18.9 est.	Yes	113.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-BF16	4.0	18.9 est.	Yes	113.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507	4.0	18.9 est.	Yes	113.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB

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

	MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Catalog models that fit	11 of 67	48 of 67
Largest exclusive fit	—	Qwen3.5-122B-A10B (122.0B)

MacBook Neo A18 Pro 8GB details → · Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB details →