M2 Max 32GB vs NVIDIA RTX 3090 for local LLMs
3 reports on the M2 Max 32GB and 219 on the NVIDIA RTX 3090
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active at 4-bit, the M2 Max 32GB has 39.3 generation tokens/s (2 runs); prompt processing 671.4 tokens/s (one run); the NVIDIA RTX 3090 has 101.7 generation tokens/s (one run). Those are community reports whose engines and settings differ, so the gap is a rough sign, not a controlled measure of the two cards. Memory bandwidth, which caps how fast a card can write, is 2.3x higher on the NVIDIA RTX 3090 (410 GB/s on the M2 Max 32GB, 936 on the NVIDIA RTX 3090).
- Memory
- 32GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 410 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 13.6 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 3
- Memory
- 24GB
- Memory bandwidth
- 936 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 142 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 219
Measured on both
Generation and prompt processing speeds from plain runs (one device, one request, no speculative decoding, the whole model in the device's memory) of the same model size at the same bit class. Each side shows the engines and reported context behind its median. Context can mean a configured window or prompt depth, so these are community comparisons with differing settings. How to read these
| Model | M2 Max 32GB | NVIDIA RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active4-bit | 39.32 runsPP 671.4 (one run)llama.cpp, 1 not stated4K to 60K context | 101.7one runllama.cpp64K context |
Estimated by the calculator
The quant the calculator recommends for each card and its estimated speed at a 32,768-token context with 32 GB of system RAM, from memory bandwidth and the model's shape. Where a model was also measured above, the measurement wins.
| Model | M2 Max 32GB | NVIDIA RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | 76.1 t/sQ3_K_M | 120.1 t/sQ4_K_S |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 20.9 t/sQ4_K_S | 33.9 t/sQ4_K_M |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 19.4 t/sQ2_K, experts in RAM |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | 20.9 t/sQ4_K_S | 33.9 t/sQ4_K_M |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 46.1 t/sQ4_K_M | 76.4 t/sQ5_K_S |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 552B · 16B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M2 Max 32GB · NVIDIA RTX 3090
Every report on each card, with its source: M2 Max 32GB · NVIDIA RTX 3090