Mac vs NVIDIA for AI: the M5 Mac Studio changed the math on local LLMs

The short answer

For local AI, NVIDIA is still the cheapest way in and the only choice if you need CUDA tools for fine-tuning or image generation. The Mac Studio wins when the model is bigger than 24 to 48GB. With…

Small models: M5 Ultra 179 t/s and M5 Max 120 t/s generation (LLaMA 7B, Q4_0) vs about 115 t/s for an RTX 3090 (Qwen3 8B, Q4_K, 4k context). Similar tests, not identical.

Prompt processing: the old Mac weakness is mostly gone on M5. M3 Ultra did 1,471 t/s, M5 Ultra 4,945 t/s, RTX 3090 about 4,050 t/s.

Price of entry: Mac Studio starts at $2,499 (M5 Max, 36GB) and $5,499 (M5 Ultra, 96GB). A 512GB M5 Ultra is listed as coming late October.

Rent before you buy: RTX 3090 rentals were from $0.12/hr on our tracker on 4 Oct 2026.

Different questions, different winners

If your models fit in 24GB and you want CUDA tools, an NVIDIA PC is the cheaper, more flexible start. If you want 70B-class or bigger models in one silent box, buy the Mac Studio, and with M5 you no…