MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs T4 16GB for Local LLMs
The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB has about 25% more memory bandwidth (400 vs 320 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 25% faster on the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB. 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 T4 16GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $4,199 for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs $2,000 for the T4 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 MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB posts the higher tok/s in 36 rows vs 8. Methodology.