Arc A770 16GB vs MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB for Local LLMs

The Arc A770 16GB has about 40% more memory bandwidth (560 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 40% faster on the Arc A770 16GB. The MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 44 vs 24 of 69 models (64 vs 16 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB but not the Arc A770 16GB: Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct (81.3B). MSRP is $349 for the Arc A770 16GB vs $3,899 for the MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB. 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 (44 shared models), the Arc A770 16GB posts the higher tok/s in 39 rows vs 5. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	Arc A770 16GB	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
Vendor	Intel	Apple
VRAM	16 GB	64 GB
Memory type	GDDR6	LPDDR5
Memory bandwidth	560 GB/s	400 GB/s
TDP	225 W	120 W
MSRP (list)	$349	$3,899
Buy	Search Amazon (affiliate)	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 44 shared models

Model	Params (B)	Arc A770 16GB tok/s	Arc A770 16GB fits	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB fits	Winner
MiniCPM5-1B	1.08	330.0 est.	Yes	235.7 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-BF16	30.0	281.9 est.	No	84.8 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	256.4 est.	No	84.8 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	246.1 est.	No	84.8 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B	34.7	213.1 est.	No	84.8 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
qwen35b-a3b-fable-sft-abliterated	34.7	202.3 est.	No	84.8 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Ornith-1.0-35B	35.0	199.2 est.	No	84.8 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	36.0	198.7 est.	No	84.8 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Qwen3.5-2B	2.0	178.2 est.	Yes	127.3 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B-layer-mix-bpw-3.8-mlx	2.3	154.9 est.	Yes	110.7 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	111.4 est.	Yes	79.5 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	99.0 est.	Yes	70.7 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	25.2	93.8 est.	Yes	67.0 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	89.1 est.	Yes	63.6 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB
NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-BF16	4.0	89.1 est.	Yes	63.6 est.	Yes	Arc A770 16GB

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

	Arc A770 16GB	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
Catalog models that fit	24 of 69	44 of 69
Largest exclusive fit	—	Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct (81.3B)

Arc A770 16GB details → · MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB details →