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Can the Apple M3 Pro (36GB) run Mistral Nemo 12B?

Apple M3 Pro (36GB) × Mistral Nemo 12B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at Q8_014.9 GB of 24.1 GB
Weights 13 GBKV cache 1.3 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantQ8_0Near-lossless
Speed~7tokens per second
Max context62Ktokens that fit at Q8_0
  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 M3 Pro (36GB) can run Mistral Nemo 12B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 14.9 GB of the 24.1 GB available, at roughly 7 tokens/second.

Try other context lengths

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Mistral Nemo 12B:

ollama run mistral-nemo:12b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 9.3 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 M3 Pro (36GB)

Run it in the cloud

No Apple M3 Pro (36GB)? Run Mistral Nemo 12B in the cloud.

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

Rent a GPU on RunPodRent a GPU on Vast.ai

Memory needed by quantization

At 8,192 tokens of context. The black line marks the 24.1 GB the Apple M3 Pro (36GB) can use. macOS lets the GPU use about 24.1 GB of the 36 GB unified memory by default.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality26.3 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless14.9 GBFits~7 tok/s
Q6_KExcellent11.9 GBFits~9 tok/s
Q5_K_MVery good10.6 GBFits~10 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular9.3 GBFits~12 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded7.9 GBFits~15 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded6.5 GBFits~20 tok/s

Measured speed from real Apple M3 Pro (36GB) owners

Tokens per second that people measured on their own Apple M3 Pro (36GB), next to our estimate.

No one has measured Mistral Nemo 12B on the Apple M3 Pro (36GB) yet. The speeds above are estimates. Run the benchmark and yours becomes the first real number on this page.

Have an Apple M3 Pro (36GB)? Add your real speed

One command times Mistral Nemo 12B 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 -- mistral-nemo:12b

Windows (PowerShell)

$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="mistral-nemo:12b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iex

How the benchmark works

GPUs that run Mistral Nemo 12B comfortably

Models that run well on the Apple M3 Pro (36GB)

Frequently asked questions

Can Apple M3 Pro (36GB) run Mistral Nemo 12B?

Yes. The Apple M3 Pro (36GB) can run Mistral Nemo 12B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 14.9 GB of the 24.1 GB available, at roughly 7 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Mistral Nemo 12B need?

About 9.3 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 26.3 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Mistral Nemo 12B on the Apple M3 Pro (36GB)?

Roughly 7 tokens per second at Q8_0, estimated from the Apple M3 Pro (36GB)'s 150 GB/s memory bandwidth.