Can the Apple M1 Max (64GB) run Qwen3.8 27B?

Apple M1 Max (64GB) × Qwen3.8 27B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at Q8_030.7 GB of 48 GB
Weights 29.5 GBKV cache 0.5 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantQ8_0Near-lossless
Speed~8tokens per second
Max context256Kthe model's full window
  1. FP16
  2. Q8_0
  3. Q6_K
  4. Q5_K_M
  5. Q4_K_M
  6. Q3_K_M
  7. Q2_K

Yes. The Apple M1 Max (64GB) can run Qwen3.8 27B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 30.7 GB of the 48 GB available, at roughly 8 tokens/second.

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Qwen3.8 27B:

ollama run qwen3.8:27b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 18 GB here). You have room for Q8_0, which is near-lossless: pick that GGUF in LM Studio or from Hugging Face.

New to this? Step-by-step setup for the Apple M1 Max (64GB)

Run it in the cloud

No Apple M1 Max (64GB)? Run Qwen3.8 27B in the cloud.

Rent a cloud GPU by the hour. No upfront cost, stop any time.

Memory needed by quantization

At 8,192 tokens of context. The black line marks the 48 GB the Apple M1 Max (64GB) can use. macOS lets the GPU use about 48 GB of the 64 GB unified memory by default.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality56.7 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless30.7 GBFits~8 tok/s
Q6_KExcellent23.9 GBFits~11 tok/s
Q5_K_MVery good20.9 GBFits~12 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular18 GBFits~14 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded14.7 GBFits~18 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded11.6 GBFits~23 tok/s

Measured speed from real Apple M1 Max (64GB) owners

Tokens per second that people measured on their own Apple M1 Max (64GB), next to our estimate.

No one has measured Qwen3.8 27B on the Apple M1 Max (64GB) yet. The speeds above are estimates. Run the benchmark and yours becomes the first real number on this page.

Have an Apple M1 Max (64GB)? Add your real speed

One command times Qwen3.8 27B in your own Ollama, shows you exactly what it would send, and asks before sending anything. No sign-up, no personal data.

macOS and Linux

curl -fsSL https://gpufit.dev/bench.sh | sh -s -- qwen3.8:27b

Windows (PowerShell)

$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="qwen3.8:27b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iex

How the benchmark works

Frequently asked questions

Can Apple M1 Max (64GB) run Qwen3.8 27B?

Yes. The Apple M1 Max (64GB) can run Qwen3.8 27B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 30.7 GB of the 48 GB available, at roughly 8 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Qwen3.8 27B need?

About 18 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 56.7 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Qwen3.8 27B on the Apple M1 Max (64GB)?

Roughly 8 tokens per second at Q8_0, estimated from the Apple M1 Max (64GB)'s 400 GB/s memory bandwidth.