MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB vs RX 7900 XT 20GB for Local LLMs

The RX 7900 XT 20GB has about 100% more memory bandwidth (800 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 100% faster on the RX 7900 XT 20GB. The MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 44 vs 30 of 69 models (64 vs 20 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB but not the RX 7900 XT 20GB: Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct (81.3B). MSRP is $3,899 for the MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB vs $899 for the RX 7900 XT 20GB. 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 RX 7900 XT 20GB posts the higher tok/s in 41 rows vs 9. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Vendor	Apple	AMD
VRAM	64 GB	20 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	GDDR6
Memory bandwidth	400 GB/s	800 GB/s
TDP	120 W	315 W
MSRP (list)	$3,899	$899
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)	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB fits	RX 7900 XT 20GB tok/s	RX 7900 XT 20GB fits	Winner
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B	34.7	84.8 est.	Yes	476.0 est.	No	RX 7900 XT 20GB
MiniCPM5-1B	1.08	235.7 est.	Yes	471.4 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
qwen35b-a3b-fable-sft-abliterated	34.7	84.8 est.	Yes	451.9 est.	No	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Ornith-1.0-35B	35.0	84.8 est.	Yes	445.0 est.	No	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	36.0	84.8 est.	Yes	443.7 est.	No	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Qwen3.5-2B	2.0	127.3 est.	Yes	254.5 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B-layer-mix-bpw-3.8-mlx	2.3	110.7 est.	Yes	221.3 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	84.8 est.	Yes	169.7 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	169.7 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-BF16	30.0	84.8 est.	Yes	169.7 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	70.7 est.	Yes	141.4 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	25.2	67.0 est.	Yes	134.0 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	79.5 est.	Yes	131.2 measured	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	127.3 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB
NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-BF16	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	127.3 est.	Yes	RX 7900 XT 20GB

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

	MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB	RX 7900 XT 20GB
Catalog models that fit	44 of 69	30 of 69
Largest exclusive fit	Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct (81.3B)	—

MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB details → · RX 7900 XT 20GB details →