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Mac mini M4 32GB vs T4 16GB for Local LLMs

The T4 16GB has about 167% more memory bandwidth (320 vs 120 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 167% faster on the T4 16GB. The Mac mini M4 32GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 38 vs 25 of 61 models (32 vs 16 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the Mac mini M4 32GB but not the T4 16GB: Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B). MSRP is $999 for the Mac mini M4 32GB vs $2,000 for the T4 16GB. 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 (44 shared models), the T4 16GB posts the higher tok/s in 38 rows vs 6. Methodology.

Spec comparison

Mac mini M4 32GBT4 16GB
VendorAppleNVIDIA
VRAM32 GB16 GB
Memory typeLPDDR5XGDDR6
Memory bandwidth120 GB/s320 GB/s
TDP155 W70 W
MSRP (list)$999$2,000
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 44 shared models

ModelParams (B)Mac mini M4 32GB tok/sMac mini M4 32GB fitsT4 16GB tok/sT4 16GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.895.5 est.Yes254.5 est.YesT4 16GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.076.4 est.Yes203.6 est.YesT4 16GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.263.6 est.Yes169.7 est.YesT4 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.525.5 est.Yes147.0 est.NoT4 16GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.525.5 est.Yes147.0 est.NoT4 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.525.5 est.Yes147.0 est.NoT4 16GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.225.5 est.Yes141.1 est.NoT4 16GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.038.2 est.Yes101.8 est.YesT4 16GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.241.3 measuredYes63.6 est.YesT4 16GB
gpt-oss-20b21.521.2 est.Yes56.6 est.YesT4 16GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.820.1 est.Yes53.6 est.YesT4 16GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.820.1 est.Yes53.6 est.YesT4 16GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.319.6 est.Yes52.2 est.YesT4 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-25074.019.1 est.Yes50.9 est.YesT4 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-25074.019.1 est.Yes50.9 est.YesT4 16GB

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 32GBT4 16GB
Catalog models that fit38 of 6125 of 61
Largest exclusive fitMixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B)—

Mac mini M4 32GB details → · T4 16GB details →