MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB vs Titan X Pascal 12GB for Local LLMs

The MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB has about 14% more memory bandwidth (546 vs 480 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 14% faster on the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB. The MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 53 vs 18 of 69 models (128 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB but not the Titan X Pascal 12GB: Step-3.5-Flash (196.8B). MSRP is $4,399 for the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB vs $1,200 for the Titan X Pascal 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 (41 shared models), the MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB posts the higher tok/s in 30 rows vs 11. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB	Titan X Pascal 12GB
Vendor	Apple	NVIDIA
VRAM	128 GB	12 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5X	GDDR5X
Memory bandwidth	546 GB/s	480 GB/s
TDP	160 W	250 W
MSRP (list)	$4,399	$1,200
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 41 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB fits	Titan X Pascal 12GB tok/s	Titan X Pascal 12GB fits	Winner
MiniCPM5-1B	1.08	321.7 est.	Yes	282.8 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	96.5 est.	Yes	189.3 est.	No	Titan X Pascal 12GB
Qwen3.5-2B	2.0	173.7 est.	Yes	152.7 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B-layer-mix-bpw-3.8-mlx	2.3	151.1 est.	Yes	132.8 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-BF16	30.0	115.8 est.	Yes	135.8 est.	No	Titan X Pascal 12GB
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	25.2	91.4 est.	Yes	135.0 est.	No	Titan X Pascal 12GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	115.8 est.	Yes	123.5 est.	No	Titan X Pascal 12GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	115.8 est.	Yes	118.5 est.	No	Titan X Pascal 12GB
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	36.0	115.8 est.	Yes	95.7 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B	34.7	115.8 est.	Yes	102.6 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	115.8 est.	Yes	20.7 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Ornith-1.0-35B	35.0	115.8 est.	Yes	96.0 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	115.8 est.	Yes	19.9 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
qwen35b-a3b-fable-sft-abliterated	34.7	115.8 est.	Yes	97.5 est.	No	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	108.6 est.	Yes	95.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB

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	Titan X Pascal 12GB
Catalog models that fit	53 of 69	18 of 69
Largest exclusive fit	Step-3.5-Flash (196.8B)	—

MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB details → · Titan X Pascal 12GB details →