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Mac mini M4 32GB vs RTX 3090 24GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 3090 24GB has about 680% more memory bandwidth (936 vs 120 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 680% faster on the RTX 3090 24GB. The Mac mini M4 32GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 38 vs 33 of 61 models (32 vs 24 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac mini M4 32GB but not the RTX 3090 24GB: Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B). MSRP is $999 for the Mac mini M4 32GB vs $1,499 for the RTX 3090 24GB. 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 3090 24GB posts the higher tok/s in 47 rows vs 0. Methodology.

Spec comparison

Mac mini M4 32GBRTX 3090 24GB
VendorAppleNVIDIA
VRAM32 GB24 GB
Memory typeLPDDR5XGDDR6X
Memory bandwidth120 GB/s936 GB/s
TDP155 W350 W
MSRP (list)$999$1,499
BuySearch Amazon (affiliate)MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ventus 3X 24G 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 47 shared models

ModelParams (B)Mac mini M4 32GB tok/sMac mini M4 32GB fitsRTX 3090 24GB tok/sRTX 3090 24GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.895.5 est.Yes744.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.076.4 est.Yes595.6 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.263.6 est.Yes496.4 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.038.2 est.Yes297.8 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.525.5 est.Yes198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.525.5 est.Yes198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.225.5 est.Yes198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.525.5 est.Yes198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.241.3 measuredYes186.1 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
gpt-oss-20b21.521.2 est.Yes161.8 measuredYesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next79.736.1 est.No158.2 est.NoRTX 3090 24GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.820.1 est.Yes156.7 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.820.1 est.Yes156.7 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.319.6 est.Yes152.7 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct81.334.7 est.No152.3 est.NoRTX 3090 24GB

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 3090 24GB
Catalog models that fit38 of 6133 of 61
Largest exclusive fitMixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B)—

Mac mini M4 32GB details → · RTX 3090 24GB details →