Arc B580 12GB vs Mac mini M4 32GB for Local LLMs

The Arc B580 12GB has about 280% more memory bandwidth (456 vs 120 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 280% faster on the Arc B580 12GB. The Mac mini M4 32GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 38 vs 18 of 61 models (32 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac mini M4 32GB but not the Arc B580 12GB: Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B). MSRP is $249 for the Arc B580 12GB vs $999 for the Mac mini M4 32GB. 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 (40 shared models), the Arc B580 12GB posts the higher tok/s in 38 rows vs 2. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	Arc B580 12GB	Mac mini M4 32GB
Vendor	Intel	Apple
VRAM	12 GB	32 GB
Memory type	GDDR6	LPDDR5X
Memory bandwidth	456 GB/s	120 GB/s
TDP	190 W	155 W
MSRP (list)	$249	$999
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 40 shared models

Model	Params (B)	Arc B580 12GB tok/s	Arc B580 12GB fits	Mac mini M4 32GB tok/s	Mac mini M4 32GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	362.7 est.	Yes	95.5 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	290.2 est.	Yes	76.4 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	241.8 est.	Yes	63.6 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	180.6 est.	No	21.2 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	145.1 est.	Yes	38.2 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	117.8 est.	No	25.5 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	117.8 est.	No	25.5 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	117.8 est.	No	25.5 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	113.1 est.	No	25.5 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	76.4 est.	Yes	20.1 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	76.4 est.	Yes	20.1 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	74.4 est.	Yes	19.6 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	72.5 est.	Yes	19.1 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507	4.0	72.5 est.	Yes	19.1 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB
Phi-4	14.7	56.1 est.	No	5.2 est.	Yes	Arc B580 12GB

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 B580 12GB	Mac mini M4 32GB
Catalog models that fit	18 of 61	38 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	—	Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B)

Arc B580 12GB details → · Mac mini M4 32GB details →