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Can the Apple M3 Ultra (256GB) run Phi-4 Mini 3.8B?

Apple M3 Ultra (256GB) × Phi-4 Mini 3.8B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at FP169.4 GB of 192 GB
Weights 7.7 GBKV cache 1.1 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantFP16Full quality
Speed~64tokens per second
Max context128Kthe 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 M3 Ultra (256GB) can run Phi-4 Mini 3.8B fully in unified memory at FP16 (full quality), using about 9.4 GB of the 192 GB available, at roughly 64 tokens/second.

Try other context lengths

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Phi-4 Mini 3.8B:

ollama run phi4-mini:3.8b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 4 GB here). You have room for FP16, which is full quality: pick that GGUF in LM Studio or from Hugging Face.

New to this? Step-by-step setup for the Apple M3 Ultra (256GB)

Run it in the cloud

No Apple M3 Ultra (256GB)? Run Phi-4 Mini 3.8B 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 192 GB the Apple M3 Ultra (256GB) can use. macOS lets the GPU use about 192 GB of the 256 GB unified memory by default.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality9.4 GBFits~64 tok/s
Q8_0Near-lossless5.8 GBFits~120 tok/s
Q6_KExcellent4.8 GBFits~156 tok/s
Q5_K_MVery good4.4 GBFits~180 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular4 GBFits~211 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded3.6 GBFits~262 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded3.1 GBFits~341 tok/s

Measured speed from real Apple M3 Ultra (256GB) owners

Tokens per second that people measured on their own Apple M3 Ultra (256GB), next to our estimate.

No one has measured Phi-4 Mini 3.8B on the Apple M3 Ultra (256GB) yet. The speeds above are estimates. Run the benchmark and yours becomes the first real number on this page.

Have an Apple M3 Ultra (256GB)? Add your real speed

One command times Phi-4 Mini 3.8B 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-mini:3.8b

Windows (PowerShell)

$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="phi4-mini:3.8b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iex

How the benchmark works

GPUs that run Phi-4 Mini 3.8B comfortably

Models that run well on the Apple M3 Ultra (256GB)

Frequently asked questions

Can Apple M3 Ultra (256GB) run Phi-4 Mini 3.8B?

Yes. The Apple M3 Ultra (256GB) can run Phi-4 Mini 3.8B fully in unified memory at FP16 (full quality), using about 9.4 GB of the 192 GB available, at roughly 64 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Phi-4 Mini 3.8B need?

About 4 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 9.4 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Phi-4 Mini 3.8B on the Apple M3 Ultra (256GB)?

Roughly 64 tokens per second at FP16, estimated from the Apple M3 Ultra (256GB)'s 819 GB/s memory bandwidth.