MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB vs RX 7700 XT 12GB for Local LLMs
The RX 7700 XT 12GB has about 8% more memory bandwidth (432 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 8% faster on the RX 7700 XT 12GB. The MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 44 vs 18 of 69 models (64 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB but not the RX 7700 XT 12GB: Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct (81.3B). MSRP is $3,899 for the MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB vs $449 for the RX 7700 XT 12GB. 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 (41 shared models), the RX 7700 XT 12GB posts the higher tok/s in 34 rows vs 7. Methodology.