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Can the Apple M3 Pro (36GB) run Mistral Small 24B?

Apple M3 Pro (36GB) × Mistral Small 24B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at Q6_K21.3 GB of 24.1 GB
Weights 19.4 GBKV cache 1.3 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantQ6_KExcellent
Speed~5tokens per second
Max context24Ktokens that fit at Q6_K
  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 Small 24B fully in unified memory at Q6_K (excellent), using about 21.3 GB of the 24.1 GB available, at roughly 5 tokens/second.

Try other context lengths

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Mistral Small 24B:

ollama run mistral-small:24b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 16.2 GB here). You have room for Q6_K, which is excellent: 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 Small 24B 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 quality49.1 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless27 GBToo big—
Q6_KExcellent21.3 GBFits~5 tok/s
Q5_K_MVery good18.7 GBFits~5 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular16.2 GBFits~6 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded13.5 GBFits~8 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded10.8 GBFits~10 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 Small 24B 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 Small 24B 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-small:24b

Windows (PowerShell)

$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="mistral-small:24b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iex

How the benchmark works

GPUs that run Mistral Small 24B comfortably

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

Frequently asked questions

Can Apple M3 Pro (36GB) run Mistral Small 24B?

Yes. The Apple M3 Pro (36GB) can run Mistral Small 24B fully in unified memory at Q6_K (excellent), using about 21.3 GB of the 24.1 GB available, at roughly 5 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Mistral Small 24B need?

About 16.2 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 49.1 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Mistral Small 24B on the Apple M3 Pro (36GB)?

Roughly 5 tokens per second at Q6_K, estimated from the Apple M3 Pro (36GB)'s 150 GB/s memory bandwidth.