L40S 48GB vs MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB for Local LLMs

The L40S 48GB has about 116% more memory bandwidth (864 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 116% faster on the L40S 48GB. The L40S 48GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 41 vs 39 of 69 models (48 vs 32 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the L40S 48GB but not the MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB: Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct (81.3B). MSRP is $8,000 for the L40S 48GB vs $3,299 for the MacBook Pro M1 Max 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 (53 shared models), the L40S 48GB posts the higher tok/s in 53 rows vs 0. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	L40S 48GB	MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB
Vendor	NVIDIA	Apple
VRAM	48 GB	32 GB
Memory type	GDDR6	LPDDR5
Memory bandwidth	864 GB/s	400 GB/s
TDP	350 W	120 W
MSRP (list)	$8,000	$3,299
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 53 shared models

Model	Params (B)	L40S 48GB tok/s	L40S 48GB fits	MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB fits	Winner
MiniCPM5-1B	1.08	509.1 est.	Yes	235.7 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3.5-2B	2.0	274.9 est.	Yes	127.3 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B-layer-mix-bpw-3.8-mlx	2.3	239.1 est.	Yes	110.7 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	36.0	183.3 est.	Yes	84.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B	34.7	183.3 est.	Yes	84.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	183.3 est.	Yes	84.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	183.3 est.	Yes	84.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-BF16	30.0	183.3 est.	Yes	84.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	183.3 est.	Yes	122.9 est.	No	L40S 48GB
Ornith-1.0-35B	35.0	183.3 est.	Yes	84.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	183.3 est.	Yes	118.2 est.	No	L40S 48GB
qwen35b-a3b-fable-sft-abliterated	34.7	183.3 est.	Yes	84.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	171.8 est.	Yes	79.5 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	152.7 est.	Yes	70.7 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
gpt-oss-120b	120.4	152.2 est.	No	31.3 est.	No	L40S 48GB

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

	L40S 48GB	MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB
Catalog models that fit	41 of 69	39 of 69
Largest exclusive fit	Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct (81.3B)	—

L40S 48GB details → · MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB details →