Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB vs RTX 3080 10GB for Local LLMs

The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB has about 8% more memory bandwidth (819 vs 760 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 8% faster on the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB. The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 17 of 61 models (96 vs 10 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB but not the RTX 3080 10GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $3,999 for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB vs $699 for the RTX 3080 10GB. 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 Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB posts the higher tok/s in 29 rows vs 9. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB	RTX 3080 10GB
Vendor	Apple	NVIDIA
VRAM	96 GB	10 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	GDDR6X
Memory bandwidth	819 GB/s	760 GB/s
TDP	480 W	320 W
MSRP (list)	$3,999	$699
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)	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB tok/s	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits	RTX 3080 10GB tok/s	RTX 3080 10GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	651.5 est.	Yes	604.5 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	521.2 est.	Yes	483.6 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	434.3 est.	Yes	403.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	260.6 est.	Yes	241.8 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	115.5 measured	Yes	209.1 est.	No	RTX 3080 10GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	173.7 est.	Yes	136.3 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	173.7 est.	Yes	136.3 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	173.7 est.	Yes	130.9 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	173.7 est.	Yes	136.3 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	154.6 measured	Yes	151.1 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	137.2 est.	Yes	127.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	137.2 est.	Yes	127.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	133.6 est.	Yes	124.0 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507	4.0	130.3 est.	Yes	120.9 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507	4.0	130.3 est.	Yes	120.9 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB

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

	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB	RTX 3080 10GB
Catalog models that fit	47 of 61	17 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)	—

Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB details → · RTX 3080 10GB details →