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L40S 48GB vs Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB for Local LLMs

The L40S 48GB has about 5% more memory bandwidth (864 vs 819 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 5% faster on the L40S 48GB. The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 39 of 61 models (96 vs 48 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB but not the L40S 48GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $8,000 for the L40S 48GB vs $3,999 for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB. 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 45 rows vs 5. Methodology.

Spec comparison

L40S 48GBMac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
VendorNVIDIAApple
VRAM48 GB96 GB
Memory typeGDDR6LPDDR5
Memory bandwidth864 GB/s819 GB/s
TDP350 W480 W
MSRP (list)$8,000$3,999
BuySearch 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 50 shared models

ModelParams (B)L40S 48GB tok/sL40S 48GB fitsMac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB tok/sMac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.8687.3 est.Yes651.5 est.YesL40S 48GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct81.3562.3 est.No173.7 est.YesL40S 48GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.0549.8 est.Yes521.2 est.YesL40S 48GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.2458.2 est.Yes434.3 est.YesL40S 48GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.0274.9 est.Yes260.6 est.YesL40S 48GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.5183.3 est.Yes173.7 est.YesL40S 48GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.5183.3 est.Yes173.7 est.YesL40S 48GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.2183.3 est.Yes173.7 est.YesL40S 48GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.5183.3 est.Yes173.7 est.YesL40S 48GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next79.7183.3 est.Yes173.7 est.YesL40S 48GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.2171.8 est.Yes154.6 measuredYesL40S 48GB
gpt-oss-20b21.5152.7 est.Yes115.5 measuredYesL40S 48GB
gpt-oss-120b120.4152.4 est.No102.2 est.YesL40S 48GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.8144.7 est.Yes137.2 est.YesL40S 48GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.8144.7 est.Yes137.2 est.YesL40S 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 48GBMac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Catalog models that fit39 of 6147 of 61
Largest exclusive fit—DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)

L40S 48GB details → · Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB details →