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Can the Apple M4 (16GB) run Qwen2.5 7B?

Apple M4 (16GB) × Qwen2.5 7B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at Q8_09.2 GB of 10.7 GB
Weights 8.1 GBKV cache 0.5 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantQ8_0Near-lossless
Memory9.2 GBof 10.7 GB usable
Speed~9tokens per second
  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 M4 (16GB) can run Qwen2.5 7B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 9.2 GB of the 10.7 GB available, at roughly 9 tokens/second.

Try other context lengths

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Qwen2.5 7B:

ollama run qwen2.5:7b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 5.7 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 M4 (16GB)

Run it in the cloud

No Apple M4 (16GB)? Run Qwen2.5 7B 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 10.7 GB the Apple M4 (16GB) can use. macOS lets the GPU use about 10.7 GB of the 16 GB unified memory by default.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality16.3 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless9.2 GBFits~9 tok/s
Q6_KExcellent7.3 GBFits~12 tok/s
Q5_K_MVery good6.5 GBFits~13 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular5.7 GBFits~16 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded4.8 GBFits~19 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded3.9 GBFits~25 tok/s

Measured speed from real Apple M4 (16GB) owners

Tokens per second that people measured on their own Apple M4 (16GB), next to our estimate.

No one has measured Qwen2.5 7B on the Apple M4 (16GB) yet. The speeds above are estimates. Run the benchmark and yours becomes the first real number on this page.

Have an Apple M4 (16GB)? Add your real speed

One command times Qwen2.5 7B 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 -- qwen2.5:7b

Windows (PowerShell)

$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="qwen2.5:7b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iex

How the benchmark works

GPUs that run Qwen2.5 7B comfortably

Models that run well on the Apple M4 (16GB)

Frequently asked questions

Can Apple M4 (16GB) run Qwen2.5 7B?

Yes. The Apple M4 (16GB) can run Qwen2.5 7B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 9.2 GB of the 10.7 GB available, at roughly 9 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Qwen2.5 7B need?

About 5.7 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 16.3 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Qwen2.5 7B on the Apple M4 (16GB)?

Roughly 9 tokens per second at Q8_0, estimated from the Apple M4 (16GB)'s 120 GB/s memory bandwidth.