Hardware comparison
MacBook Air/Pro M5 (24GB) vs NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada (48GB) for local LLMs
How the two stack up for running open-source LLMs locally — memory, bandwidth, price, and how many of the 69 tracked models each one can run.
Scroll sideways to compare both machines. Keyboard: focus the table, then use the arrow keys. Metric names stay visible.
| Hardware | MacBook Air/Pro M5 (24GB) | NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada (48GB) |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | 24.0 GB | 48.0 GB (better for this comparison) |
| Bandwidth | 153 GB/s | 960 GB/s (better for this comparison) |
| Price (approx) | $1,299Complete system | $6,800GPU only · host PC required, sold separately |
| LLMs it runs | 49 of 69 | 57 of 69 (better for this comparison) |
| Best model it runs | Gemma 4 31BQ2_K · estimated 8–11 tok/s | Gemma 4 31BQ8_0 · estimated 20–30 tok/s |
These prices cover different purchases: a GPU card excludes its required host PC; a complete system includes the machine. No price winner is marked. Prices are approximate catalog estimates; check current configurations and prices before buying.
The recommended quants differ. These estimated speeds are not a like-for-like comparison. Estimates use 4,096 context tokens, llama.cpp and one stream.
The NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada (48GB) runs 8 more of the tracked models (57 vs 49), thanks to its 48.0 GB of memory. The NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada (48GB) has more memory bandwidth (960 GB/s). Higher bandwidth can help generation speed, but model, quant, architecture and runtime also affect the estimates.