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MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs RTX 3090 Ti 24GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 3090 Ti 24GB has about 152% more memory bandwidth (1,008 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 152% faster on the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB. The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 33 of 61 models (128 vs 24 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB but not the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $4,199 for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs $1,999 for the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB. 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 (47 shared models), the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB posts the higher tok/s in 44 rows vs 3. Methodology.

Spec comparison

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GBRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
VendorAppleNVIDIA
VRAM128 GB24 GB
Memory typeLPDDR5GDDR6X
Memory bandwidth400 GB/s1,008 GB/s
TDP140 W450 W
MSRP (list)$4,199$1,999
BuySearch 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 47 shared models

ModelParams (B)MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB tok/sMacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fitsRTX 3090 Ti 24GB tok/sRTX 3090 Ti 24GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.8318.2 est.Yes801.8 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.0254.5 est.Yes641.5 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.2212.1 est.Yes534.5 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.0127.3 est.Yes320.7 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.584.8 est.Yes213.8 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.584.8 est.Yes213.8 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.284.8 est.Yes213.8 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.584.8 est.Yes213.8 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.279.5 est.Yes200.5 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
gpt-oss-20b21.570.7 est.Yes178.2 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next79.784.8 est.Yes170.4 est.NoRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.867.0 est.Yes168.8 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.867.0 est.Yes168.8 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.365.3 est.Yes164.5 est.YesRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct81.384.8 est.Yes164.0 est.NoRTX 3090 Ti 24GB

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 128GBRTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Catalog models that fit47 of 6133 of 61
Largest exclusive fitDeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)—

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB details → · RTX 3090 Ti 24GB details →