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Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB vs RTX 5090 32GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 5090 32GB has about 119% more memory bandwidth (1,792 vs 819 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 119% faster on the RTX 5090 32GB. The Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 38 of 61 models (96 vs 32 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB but not the RTX 5090 32GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $3,999 for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB vs $1,999 for the RTX 5090 32GB. 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 (47 shared models), the RTX 5090 32GB posts the higher tok/s in 45 rows vs 2. Methodology.

Spec comparison

Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GBRTX 5090 32GB
VendorAppleNVIDIA
VRAM96 GB32 GB
Memory typeLPDDR5GDDR7
Memory bandwidth819 GB/s1,792 GB/s
TDP480 W575 W
MSRP (list)$3,999$1,999
BuySearch 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 47 shared models

ModelParams (B)Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB tok/sMac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB fitsRTX 5090 32GB tok/sRTX 5090 32GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.8651.5 est.Yes1425.5 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.0521.2 est.Yes1140.4 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.2434.3 est.Yes950.3 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.0260.6 est.Yes570.2 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next79.7173.7 est.Yes538.6 est.NoRTX 5090 32GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct81.3173.7 est.Yes518.3 est.NoRTX 5090 32GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.5173.7 est.Yes380.1 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.5173.7 est.Yes380.1 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.2173.7 est.Yes380.1 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.5173.7 est.Yes380.1 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.2154.6 measuredYes356.4 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.8137.2 est.Yes300.1 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.8137.2 est.Yes300.1 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.3133.6 est.Yes292.4 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-25074.0130.3 est.Yes285.1 est.YesRTX 5090 32GB

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 96GBRTX 5090 32GB
Catalog models that fit47 of 6138 of 61
Largest exclusive fitDeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)—

Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB details → · RTX 5090 32GB details →