Qwen on Apple M3
Can I run Qwen2.5 72B on an Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB?
Yes. Qwen2.5 72B at Q4_K_M uses 44.3 GB of the 192.0 GB available on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB, and runs at about 11.1 tokens per second. You can push the context to 128K.
Runs comfortably
44.3 GB of 192.0 GB · 23%0192 GB
Weights
41.2 GB
KV cache
2.5 GB
Runtime overhead
0.6 GB
Qwen2.5 72B at Q4_K_M leaves 147.7 GB spare on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB. There is room to raise the context length or move up a quantisation level.
Generation11.1tok/s
Prompt processing165tok/s
Max context128Ktokens
KV per 1K tokens0GB
Every quantisation of Qwen2.5 72B on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB
Highlighted row is the highest quality that still fits at 8K context.
| Quantisation | bpw | Weights | Total | Verdict | Max ctx | tok/s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 / BF16 | 16.00 | 135.4 GB | 138.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 3.46 |
| INT8 / W8A8 | 8.50 | 71.4 GB | 74.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 6.49 |
| Q8_0 (GGUF) | 8.50 | 71.4 GB | 74.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 6.49 |
| FP8 (E4M3) | 8.00 | 67.7 GB | 70.8 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 6.84 |
| Q6_K | 6.56 | 55.5 GB | 58.6 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 8.30 |
| Q5_K_M | 5.67 | 48.0 GB | 51.1 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 9.57 |
| Q5_K_S | 5.52 | 46.7 GB | 49.8 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 9.82 |
| Q4_K_M | 4.85 | 41.2 GB | 44.3 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 11.1 |
| AWQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 39.4 GB | 42.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 11.6 |
| GPTQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 39.4 GB | 42.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 11.6 |
| MXFP4 | 4.25 | 39.4 GB | 42.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 11.6 |
| Q4_K_S | 4.58 | 39.0 GB | 42.1 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 11.7 |
| Q4_0 | 4.55 | 38.8 GB | 41.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 11.8 |
| IQ4_XS | 4.25 | 36.3 GB | 39.4 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 12.5 |
| Q3_K_M | 3.91 | 33.6 GB | 36.6 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 13.5 |
| IQ3_M | 3.70 | 31.8 GB | 34.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 14.2 |
| IQ3_XXS | 3.06 | 26.6 GB | 29.7 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 16.8 |
| Q2_K | 2.63 | 23.1 GB | 26.2 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 19.3 |
| IQ2_XXS | 2.06 | 18.4 GB | 21.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 23.8 |
| IQ1_M | 1.75 | 15.9 GB | 19.0 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 27.2 |