MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs RTX 5060 Ti 8GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 5060 Ti 8GB has about 12% more memory bandwidth (448 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 12% faster on the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB. The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 17 of 61 models (128 vs 8 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB but not the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $4,199 for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs $379 for the RTX 5060 Ti 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 (38 shared models), the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB posts the higher tok/s in 25 rows vs 13. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Vendor	Apple	NVIDIA
VRAM	128 GB	8 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	GDDR7
Memory bandwidth	400 GB/s	448 GB/s
TDP	140 W	180 W
MSRP (list)	$4,199	$379
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 38 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB tok/s	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	318.2 est.	Yes	356.4 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	254.5 est.	Yes	285.1 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	212.1 est.	Yes	237.6 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	127.3 est.	Yes	142.5 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	79.5 est.	Yes	89.1 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	51.4 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	51.4 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	84.8 est.	Yes	49.4 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	51.4 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	70.7 est.	Yes	78.9 est.	No	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	67.0 est.	Yes	75.0 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	67.0 est.	Yes	75.0 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	65.3 est.	Yes	73.1 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	71.3 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	71.3 est.	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB

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	RTX 5060 Ti 8GB
Catalog models that fit	47 of 61	17 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)	—

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB details → · RTX 5060 Ti 8GB details →