Can the Apple M3 Pro (36GB) run Phi-4 Reasoning 14B?
- FP16
- Q8_0
- Q6_K
- Q5_K_M
- Q4_K_M
- Q3_K_M
- Q2_K
Yes. The Apple M3 Pro (36GB) can run Phi-4 Reasoning 14B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 17.9 GB of the 24.1 GB available, at roughly 6 tokens/second.
Run it with Ollama
With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Phi-4 Reasoning 14B:
ollama run phi4-reasoning:14bOllama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 11.2 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 Phi-4 Reasoning 14B 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 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.
| Quant | Quality | Memory | Fits? | Speed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 | Full quality | 31.7 GB | Too big | — | |
| Q8_0 | Near-lossless | 17.9 GB | Fits | ~6 tok/s | |
| Q6_K | Excellent | 14.3 GB | Fits | ~7 tok/s | |
| Q5_K_M | Very good | 12.7 GB | Fits | ~9 tok/s | |
| Q4_K_M | Good, most popular | 11.2 GB | Fits | ~10 tok/s | |
| Q3_K_M | Noticeably degraded | 9.5 GB | Fits | ~13 tok/s | |
| Q2_K | Heavily degraded | 7.8 GB | Fits | ~16 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 Phi-4 Reasoning 14B 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 Phi-4 Reasoning 14B 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 -- phi4-reasoning:14bWindows (PowerShell)
$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="phi4-reasoning:14b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iexGPUs that run Phi-4 Reasoning 14B comfortably
Frequently asked questions
Can Apple M3 Pro (36GB) run Phi-4 Reasoning 14B?
Yes. The Apple M3 Pro (36GB) can run Phi-4 Reasoning 14B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 17.9 GB of the 24.1 GB available, at roughly 6 tokens/second.
How much VRAM does Phi-4 Reasoning 14B need?
About 11.2 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 31.7 GB at full FP16 precision.
How fast is Phi-4 Reasoning 14B on the Apple M3 Pro (36GB)?
Roughly 6 tokens per second at Q8_0, estimated from the Apple M3 Pro (36GB)'s 150 GB/s memory bandwidth.