Apple · M1 · unified memory

What runs on a MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB

64 GB at 400 GB/s. The largest model that fits at Q4_K_M is Qwen2.5 72B, at roughly 5.10 tokens per second. Unified memory means the operating system takes a share, so budget around three quarters of the total.

Runs comfortably

6.1 GB of 48.0 GB · 13%
048 GB
Weights 4.6 GB
KV cache 1.0 GB
Runtime overhead 0.5 GB

Llama 3.1 8B at Q4_K_M leaves 41.9 GB spare on a MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB. There is room to raise the context length or move up a quantisation level.

Generation42.1tok/s
Prompt processing549tok/s
Max context128Ktokens
KV per 1K tokens0GB

Every quantisation of Llama 3.1 8B on a MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB

Highlighted row is the highest quality that still fits at 8K context.

QuantisationbpwWeights TotalVerdictMax ctxtok/s
FP16 / BF16 16.00 15.0 GB 16.5 GB Runs comfortably 128K 14.0
INT8 / W8A8 8.50 7.7 GB 9.2 GB Runs comfortably 128K 26.3
Q8_0 (GGUF) 8.50 7.7 GB 9.2 GB Runs comfortably 128K 26.3
FP8 (E4M3) 8.00 7.5 GB 9.0 GB Runs comfortably 128K 27.1
Q6_K 6.56 6.1 GB 7.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 32.5
AWQ 4-bit 4.25 5.4 GB 6.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 36.5
GPTQ 4-bit 4.25 5.4 GB 6.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 36.5
MXFP4 4.25 5.4 GB 6.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 36.5
Q5_K_M 5.67 5.3 GB 6.8 GB Runs comfortably 128K 37.2
Q5_K_S 5.52 5.2 GB 6.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 38.1
Q4_K_M 4.85 4.6 GB 6.1 GB Runs comfortably 128K 42.1
Q4_K_S 4.58 4.4 GB 5.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 44.0
Q4_0 4.55 4.4 GB 5.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 44.2
IQ4_XS 4.25 4.1 GB 5.6 GB Runs comfortably 128K 46.5
Q3_K_M 3.91 3.8 GB 5.4 GB Runs comfortably 128K 49.4
IQ3_M 3.70 3.7 GB 5.2 GB Runs comfortably 128K 51.4
IQ3_XXS 3.06 3.2 GB 4.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 58.7
Q2_K 2.63 2.8 GB 4.3 GB Runs comfortably 128K 64.8
IQ2_XXS 2.06 2.3 GB 3.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 75.2
IQ1_M 1.75 2.1 GB 3.6 GB Runs comfortably 128K 82.4

Models on a MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB

Q4_K_M at 8K context. Bandwidth sets the speed; capacity sets the ceiling.

ModelParamsWeightsVerdictMax ctxtok/s
DeepSeek-R1 671B-A37B 671B 379.0 GB Won't fit — 1.79
Qwen3 235B-A22B 235.1B 132.8 GB Won't fit — 3.52
gpt-oss 120B-A5.1B 116.8B 66.0 GB Won't fit — 24.3
Llama 4 Scout 109B-A17B 109B 61.7 GB Won't fit — 8.19
Qwen2.5 72B 72.7B 41.2 GB Fits, but tight 20K 5.10
Llama 3.1 70B 70.5B 40.0 GB Runs comfortably 24K 5.25
Mixtral 8x7B 46.7B 26.4 GB Runs comfortably 32K 23.6
Command R 35B 35.0B 20.1 GB Runs comfortably 22K 8.64
Yi-1.5 34B 34.4B 19.5 GB Runs comfortably 32K 10.6
Qwen3 32B 32.8B 18.6 GB Runs comfortably 115K 11.0
Qwen2.5-Coder 32B 32.8B 18.6 GB Runs comfortably 115K 11.0
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen 32B 32.8B 18.6 GB Runs comfortably 115K 11.0
Qwen3 30B-A3B 30.5B 17.3 GB Runs comfortably 128K 61.7
Gemma 3 27B 27.4B 15.6 GB Runs comfortably 128K 13.2
Mistral Small 24B 23.6B 13.4 GB Runs comfortably 32K 15.4
gpt-oss 20B-A3.6B 20.9B 11.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 77.0
Qwen3 14B 14.8B 8.5 GB Runs comfortably 128K 23.8
Phi-4 14B 14.7B 8.4 GB Runs comfortably 16K 23.6
Mistral NeMo 12B 12.3B 7.0 GB Runs comfortably 128K 28.2
Gemma 3 12B 12.2B 7.0 GB Runs comfortably 128K 28.6
GLM-4 9B 9.4B 5.4 GB Runs comfortably 128K 38.7
Qwen3 8B 8.2B 4.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 40.8
Llama 3.1 8B 8.0B 4.6 GB Runs comfortably 128K 42.1
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 8B 8.0B 4.6 GB Runs comfortably 128K 42.1
Qwen2.5 7B 7.6B 4.4 GB Runs comfortably 128K 46.8
Mistral 7B v0.3 7.3B 4.1 GB Runs comfortably 32K 46.6
Gemma 3 4B 4.3B 2.5 GB Runs comfortably 128K 79.6
Qwen3 4B 4.0B 2.3 GB Runs comfortably 128K 74.6
Llama 3.2 3B 3.2B 1.8 GB Runs comfortably 128K 93.7
Llama 3.2 1B 1.2B 0.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 251

Direct answers

Llama 3.1 8B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
8.0BLlama 3.1 70B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
70.5BLlama 3.2 3B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
3.2BLlama 3.2 1B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
1.2BLlama 4 Scout 109B-A17B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
109BQwen3 8B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
8.2BQwen3 14B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
14.8BQwen3 32B on MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB
32.8B