MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB vs RTX 5060 Ti 16GB for Local LLMs

The MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB has about 22% more memory bandwidth (546 vs 448 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 22% faster on the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB. The MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 25 of 61 models (128 vs 16 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB but not the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $4,399 for the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB vs $429 for the RTX 5060 Ti 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 MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB posts the higher tok/s in 33 rows vs 11. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Vendor	Apple	NVIDIA
VRAM	128 GB	16 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5X	GDDR7
Memory bandwidth	546 GB/s	448 GB/s
TDP	160 W	180 W
MSRP (list)	$4,399	$429
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 44 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB tok/s	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	434.3 est.	Yes	356.4 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	347.5 est.	Yes	285.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	289.5 est.	Yes	237.6 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	115.8 est.	Yes	205.8 est.	No	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	115.8 est.	Yes	205.8 est.	No	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	115.8 est.	Yes	205.8 est.	No	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	115.8 est.	Yes	197.5 est.	No	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	173.7 est.	Yes	142.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	115.8 est.	Yes	32.4 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	115.8 est.	Yes	33.7 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	96.5 est.	Yes	111.5 measured	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	108.6 est.	Yes	89.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	91.4 est.	Yes	75.0 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	91.4 est.	Yes	75.0 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3	7.2	48.3 est.	Yes	91.1 measured	Yes	RTX 5060 Ti 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

	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB	RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
Catalog models that fit	47 of 61	25 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)	—

MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB details → · RTX 5060 Ti 16GB details →