Gaudi 3 128GB vs RTX 4070 12GB for Local LLMs

The Gaudi 3 128GB has about 550% more memory bandwidth (3,276 vs 504 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 550% faster on the Gaudi 3 128GB. The Gaudi 3 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 18 of 61 models (128 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Gaudi 3 128GB but not the RTX 4070 12GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $12,500 for the Gaudi 3 128GB vs $599 for the RTX 4070 12GB. MSRP is a launch list price, not live retail — Amazon prices move; click through for the current price. Not retail-shoppable: Gaudi 3 128GB (datacenter-class; cloud rental is the realistic way to use it). In the Q4/8K head-to-head below (40 shared models), the Gaudi 3 128GB posts the higher tok/s in 40 rows vs 0. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	Gaudi 3 128GB	RTX 4070 12GB
Vendor	Intel	NVIDIA
VRAM	128 GB	12 GB
Memory type	HBM2e	GDDR6X
Memory bandwidth	3,276 GB/s	504 GB/s
TDP	600 W	200 W
MSRP (list)	$12,500	$599
Buy	—	ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4070 OC 12GB (affiliate) · More listings

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)	Gaudi 3 128GB tok/s	Gaudi 3 128GB fits	RTX 4070 12GB tok/s	RTX 4070 12GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	2605.9 est.	Yes	400.9 est.	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	2084.7 est.	Yes	320.7 est.	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	1737.3 est.	Yes	267.3 est.	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	1042.4 est.	Yes	160.4 est.	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	694.9 est.	Yes	130.2 est.	No	Gaudi 3 128GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	694.9 est.	Yes	130.2 est.	No	Gaudi 3 128GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	694.9 est.	Yes	125.0 est.	No	Gaudi 3 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	694.9 est.	Yes	130.2 est.	No	Gaudi 3 128GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	694.9 est.	Yes	20.5 est.	No	Gaudi 3 128GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	694.9 est.	Yes	21.3 est.	No	Gaudi 3 128GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	651.5 est.	Yes	160.7 measured	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	579.1 est.	Yes	199.6 est.	No	Gaudi 3 128GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	548.6 est.	Yes	84.4 est.	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	548.6 est.	Yes	84.4 est.	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	534.5 est.	Yes	82.2 est.	Yes	Gaudi 3 128GB

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

	Gaudi 3 128GB	RTX 4070 12GB
Catalog models that fit	47 of 61	18 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)	—

Gaudi 3 128GB details → · RTX 4070 12GB details →