Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB vs RTX 4070 Super 12GB for Local LLMs

The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB has about 62% more memory bandwidth (819 vs 504 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 62% faster on the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB. The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 18 of 61 models (96 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB but not the RTX 4070 Super 12GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $3,999 for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB vs $599 for the RTX 4070 Super 12GB. 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 (40 shared models), the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB posts the higher tok/s in 33 rows vs 7. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB	RTX 4070 Super 12GB
Vendor	Apple	NVIDIA
VRAM	96 GB	12 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	GDDR6X
Memory bandwidth	819 GB/s	504 GB/s
TDP	480 W	220 W
MSRP (list)	$3,999	$599
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 40 shared models

Model	Params (B)	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB tok/s	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits	RTX 4070 Super 12GB tok/s	RTX 4070 Super 12GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	651.5 est.	Yes	400.9 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	521.2 est.	Yes	320.7 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	434.3 est.	Yes	267.3 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	260.6 est.	Yes	160.4 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	115.5 measured	Yes	199.6 est.	No	RTX 4070 Super 12GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	173.7 est.	Yes	130.2 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	173.7 est.	Yes	130.2 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	173.7 est.	Yes	125.0 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	173.7 est.	Yes	130.2 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	173.7 est.	Yes	20.5 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	173.7 est.	Yes	21.3 est.	No	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	154.6 measured	Yes	100.2 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	137.2 est.	Yes	84.4 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	137.2 est.	Yes	84.4 est.	Yes	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	133.6 est.	Yes	82.2 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 4070 Super 12GB
Catalog models that fit	47 of 61	18 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)	—

Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB details → · RTX 4070 Super 12GB details →