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MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs RTX 5080 16GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 5080 16GB has about 140% more memory bandwidth (960 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 140% faster on the RTX 5080 16GB. The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 25 of 61 models (128 vs 16 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB but not the RTX 5080 16GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $4,199 for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs $999 for the RTX 5080 16GB. 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 (44 shared models), the RTX 5080 16GB posts the higher tok/s in 38 rows vs 6. Methodology.

Spec comparison

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GBRTX 5080 16GB
VendorAppleNVIDIA
VRAM128 GB16 GB
Memory typeLPDDR5GDDR7
Memory bandwidth400 GB/s960 GB/s
TDP140 W360 W
MSRP (list)$4,199$999
BuySearch Amazon (affiliate)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition (affiliate) · More listings

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 44 shared models

ModelParams (B)MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB tok/sMacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fitsRTX 5080 16GB tok/sRTX 5080 16GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.8318.2 est.Yes763.6 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.0254.5 est.Yes610.9 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.2212.1 est.Yes509.1 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.584.8 est.Yes440.9 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.584.8 est.Yes440.9 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.584.8 est.Yes440.9 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.284.8 est.Yes423.2 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.0127.3 est.Yes305.5 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
gpt-oss-20b21.570.7 est.Yes204.9 measuredYesRTX 5080 16GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.279.5 est.Yes190.9 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.37.238.0 measuredYes163.6 measuredYesRTX 5080 16GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.867.0 est.Yes160.8 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.867.0 est.Yes160.8 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.365.3 est.Yes156.6 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-25074.063.6 est.Yes152.7 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB

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 5080 16GB
Catalog models that fit47 of 6125 of 61
Largest exclusive fitDeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)—

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB details → · RTX 5080 16GB details →