Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB vs Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB for Local LLMs

The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB has about 2% more memory bandwidth (819 vs 800 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 2% faster on the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB. The Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 50 vs 47 of 61 models (192 vs 96 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB but not the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB: Qwen3-235B-A22B (235.1B). MSRP is $6,999 for the Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB 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 (54 shared models), the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB posts the higher tok/s in 48 rows vs 6. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Vendor	Apple	Apple
VRAM	192 GB	96 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	LPDDR5
Memory bandwidth	800 GB/s	819 GB/s
TDP	370 W	480 W
MSRP (list)	$6,999	$3,999
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 54 shared models

Model	Params (B)	Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB tok/s	Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB fits	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB tok/s	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	636.4 est.	Yes	651.5 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	509.1 est.	Yes	521.2 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	424.2 est.	Yes	434.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	254.5 est.	Yes	260.6 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	169.7 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	169.7 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	169.7 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	169.7 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	169.7 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	169.7 est.	Yes	173.7 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	159.1 est.	Yes	154.6 measured	Yes	Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	134.0 est.	Yes	137.2 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	134.0 est.	Yes	137.2 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	130.5 est.	Yes	133.6 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	127.3 est.	Yes	130.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB

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

	Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Catalog models that fit	50 of 61	47 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	Qwen3-235B-A22B (235.1B)	—

Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192GB details → · Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB details →