Comparison
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 vs Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB for local LLMs
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (24GB usable, 1010 GB/s) vs Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB (72GB usable, 819 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 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 | Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB |
|---|---|---|
| Type | NVIDIA GPU | Apple prebuilt |
| Memory for models | 24 GB VRAM | 72 GB GPU-usable unified |
| Memory bandwidth | 1010 GB/s | 819 GB/s |
| Price | $1,599 MSRP | $5,299 base price |
| TDP | 450 W | — |
| Backends | CUDA · Vulkan | Metal |
| Gaming (estimate) | 4K-class | — |
Specs as of 2026-07-08 / 2026-07-11 — 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.