Comparison
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 for local LLMs
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB (72GB usable, 819 GB/s) vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB usable, 936.2 GB/s) for local LLMs: capacity decides which models load at all, memory bandwidth decides the speed tier. Verdicts below are computed per model at each machine's best clean quant.
| Spec | Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Apple prebuilt | NVIDIA GPU |
| Memory for models | 72 GB GPU-usable unified | 24 GB VRAM |
| Memory bandwidth | 819 GB/s | 936.2 GB/s |
| Price | $5,299 base price | $1,499 MSRP |
| TDP | — | 350 W |
| Backends | Metal | CUDA · Vulkan |
| Gaming (estimate) | — | 1440p-class |
Specs as of 2026-07-11 / 2026-07-08 — sources on each product page. Gaming tier is estimated from FP32 compute, not a game benchmark.
What each can run, head to head
The 12 most-downloaded models we track, each graded at that machine's best clean-fit quant (llama.cpp, 8K context). Click a verdict for the full breakdown.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission. Verdicts are computed before any link is attached.
Verdicts computed from published specs and measured GGUF sizes — how the math works.