L40S 48GB vs MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB for Local LLMs

The L40S 48GB has about 58% more memory bandwidth (864 vs 546 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 58% faster on the L40S 48GB. The MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 39 of 61 models (128 vs 48 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB but not the L40S 48GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $8,000 for the L40S 48GB vs $4,399 for the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB. 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 47 rows vs 3. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	L40S 48GB	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Vendor	NVIDIA	Apple
VRAM	48 GB	128 GB
Memory type	GDDR6	LPDDR5X
Memory bandwidth	864 GB/s	546 GB/s
TDP	350 W	160 W
MSRP (list)	$8,000	$4,399
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 50 shared models

Model	Params (B)	L40S 48GB tok/s	L40S 48GB fits	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	687.3 est.	Yes	434.3 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	562.3 est.	No	115.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	549.8 est.	Yes	347.5 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	458.2 est.	Yes	289.5 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	274.9 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	183.3 est.	Yes	115.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	183.3 est.	Yes	115.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	183.3 est.	Yes	115.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	183.3 est.	Yes	115.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	183.3 est.	Yes	115.8 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	171.8 est.	Yes	108.6 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	152.7 est.	Yes	96.5 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
gpt-oss-120b	120.4	152.4 est.	No	68.1 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	144.7 est.	Yes	91.4 est.	Yes	L40S 48GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	144.7 est.	Yes	91.4 est.	Yes	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 M4 Max 128GB
Catalog models that fit	39 of 61	47 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	—	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)

L40S 48GB details → · MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB details →