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Mac mini M4 32GB vs RTX 3060 12GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 3060 12GB has about 200% more memory bandwidth (360 vs 120 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 200% faster on the RTX 3060 12GB. The Mac mini M4 32GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 38 vs 18 of 61 models (32 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac mini M4 32GB but not the RTX 3060 12GB: Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B). MSRP is $999 for the Mac mini M4 32GB vs $329 for the RTX 3060 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 RTX 3060 12GB posts the higher tok/s in 38 rows vs 2. Methodology.

Spec comparison

Mac mini M4 32GBRTX 3060 12GB
VendorAppleNVIDIA
VRAM32 GB12 GB
Memory typeLPDDR5XGDDR6
Memory bandwidth120 GB/s360 GB/s
TDP155 W170 W
MSRP (list)$999$329
BuySearch Amazon (affiliate)MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC (affiliate) · More listings

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

ModelParams (B)Mac mini M4 32GB tok/sMac mini M4 32GB fitsRTX 3060 12GB tok/sRTX 3060 12GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.895.5 est.Yes286.4 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.076.4 est.Yes229.1 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.263.6 est.Yes190.9 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.241.3 measuredYes122.9 measuredYesRTX 3060 12GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.038.2 est.Yes114.5 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.525.5 est.Yes93.0 est.NoRTX 3060 12GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.525.5 est.Yes93.0 est.NoRTX 3060 12GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.525.5 est.Yes93.0 est.NoRTX 3060 12GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.225.5 est.Yes89.3 est.NoRTX 3060 12GB
gpt-oss-20b21.521.2 est.Yes84.0 measuredNoRTX 3060 12GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.820.1 est.Yes60.3 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.820.1 est.Yes60.3 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.319.6 est.Yes58.7 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-25074.019.1 est.Yes57.3 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-25074.019.1 est.Yes57.3 est.YesRTX 3060 12GB

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 mini M4 32GBRTX 3060 12GB
Catalog models that fit38 of 6118 of 61
Largest exclusive fitMixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B)—

Mac mini M4 32GB details → · RTX 3060 12GB details →