MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs RX 7900 GRE 16GB for Local LLMs

The RX 7900 GRE 16GB has about 44% more memory bandwidth (576 vs 400 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 44% faster on the RX 7900 GRE 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 RX 7900 GRE 16GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $4,199 for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs $549 for the RX 7900 GRE 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 RX 7900 GRE 16GB posts the higher tok/s in 38 rows vs 6. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Vendor	Apple	AMD
VRAM	128 GB	16 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	GDDR6
Memory bandwidth	400 GB/s	576 GB/s
TDP	140 W	260 W
MSRP (list)	$4,199	$549
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 44 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits	RX 7900 GRE 16GB tok/s	RX 7900 GRE 16GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	318.2 est.	Yes	458.2 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	254.5 est.	Yes	366.5 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	212.1 est.	Yes	305.5 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	264.5 est.	No	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	264.5 est.	No	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	264.5 est.	No	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	84.8 est.	Yes	253.9 est.	No	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	127.3 est.	Yes	183.3 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	79.5 est.	Yes	114.5 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	70.7 est.	Yes	101.8 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	67.0 est.	Yes	96.5 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	67.0 est.	Yes	96.5 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	65.3 est.	Yes	94.0 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	91.6 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507	4.0	63.6 est.	Yes	91.6 est.	Yes	RX 7900 GRE 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 128GB	RX 7900 GRE 16GB
Catalog models that fit	47 of 61	25 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)	—

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB details → · RX 7900 GRE 16GB details →