L40S 48GB vs Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB for Local LLMs
The L40S 48GB has about 8% more memory bandwidth (864 vs 800 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 8% faster on the L40S 48GB. The Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 50 vs 39 of 61 models (192 vs 48 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB but not the L40S 48GB: Qwen3-235B-A22B (235.1B). MSRP is $8,000 for the L40S 48GB vs $6,999 for the Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB. 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 (50 shared models), the L40S 48GB posts the higher tok/s in 46 rows vs 4. Methodology.