MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs Tesla P4 8GB for Local LLMs

The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB has about 108% more memory bandwidth (400 vs 192 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 108% faster on the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB. The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 53 vs 16 of 69 models (128 vs 8 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB but not the Tesla P4 8GB: Step-3.5-Flash (196.8B). MSRP is $4,199 for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs $80 for the Tesla P4 8GB. 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 (39 shared models), the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB posts the higher tok/s in 39 rows vs 0. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB	Tesla P4 8GB
Vendor	Apple	NVIDIA
VRAM	128 GB	8 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	GDDR5
Memory bandwidth	400 GB/s	192 GB/s
TDP	140 W	75 W
MSRP (list)	$4,199	$80
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 39 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits	Tesla P4 8GB tok/s	Tesla P4 8GB fits	Winner
MiniCPM5-1B	1.08	235.7 est.	Yes	113.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3.5-2B	2.0	127.3 est.	Yes	61.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B-layer-mix-bpw-3.8-mlx	2.3	110.7 est.	Yes	53.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	36.0	84.8 est.	Yes	17.0 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B	34.7	84.8 est.	Yes	18.2 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	84.8 est.	Yes	21.0 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	21.9 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-BF16	30.0	84.8 est.	Yes	24.1 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Ornith-1.0-35B	35.0	84.8 est.	Yes	17.0 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
qwen35b-a3b-fable-sft-abliterated	34.7	84.8 est.	Yes	17.3 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	79.5 est.	Yes	38.2 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	70.7 est.	Yes	33.6 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	25.2	67.0 est.	Yes	23.9 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	30.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-BF16	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	30.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB

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 M3 Max 128GB	Tesla P4 8GB
Catalog models that fit	53 of 69	16 of 69
Largest exclusive fit	Step-3.5-Flash (196.8B)	—

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB details → · Tesla P4 8GB details →