GPUs & Macs › Apple M3 Ultra

Apple M3 Ultra: local LLM speed

Llama 2 7B (Q4_0) generates 116 tokens/s on the Apple M3 Ultra (Vulkan), and processes prompts at 1,117 tokens/s.

Measured results

Model	Generate tok/s	Prompt tok/s	Quant	Backend	Test	Source
Llama 2 7B	116	1,117	Q4_0	Vulkan FA off	tg128	llama.cpp #10879 details

Vendor	Apple
Memory	Unified (depends on configuration)
Memory bandwidth	819 GB/s
Spec source	Wikipedia (Apple M3)
Spec note	Wikipedia 819.3; corrected from 800 (llama.cpp #4167 table)

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What fits on the Apple M3 Ultra

Estimates for this chip are scaled from a measured run: Llama 2 7B Q4_0 at 116 tok/s (Vulkan, source). Fit assumes the whole model in GPU memory with ~8K context.

With 16 GB unified memory

Model	Best quant that fits	File	Expected tok/s
Qwen3.8-27B	UD-IQ2_XXS	7.3 GB	60.8 estimate
gemma-4-12B-it	Q6_K	9.8 GB	45.1 estimate
Qwen3.5-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.4 estimate
Qwen3.5-4B	Q8_0	4.5 GB	98.5 estimate
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	UD-IQ1_M	10.0 GB	256 estimate
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	UD-IQ2_M	10.0 GB	143 estimate
MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.3 estimate
gemma-4-E4B-it	Q8_0	8.2 GB	53.9 estimate

With 36 GB unified memory

Model	Best quant that fits	File	Expected tok/s
Qwen3.8-27B	UD-Q6_K	22.0 GB	20.1 estimate
gemma-4-12B-it	Q8_0	12.7 GB	34.9 estimate
Qwen3.5-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.4 estimate
Qwen3.5-4B	Q8_0	4.5 GB	98.5 estimate
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	UD-Q5_K_S	24.9 GB	103 estimate
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	UD-Q6_K	23.2 GB	62.0 estimate
MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.3 estimate
gemma-4-E4B-it	Q8_0	8.2 GB	53.9 estimate

With 64 GB unified memory

Model	Best quant that fits	File	Expected tok/s
Qwen3.8-27B	Q8_0	29.0 GB	15.2 estimate
gemma-4-12B-it	Q8_0	12.7 GB	34.9 estimate
Qwen3.5-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.4 estimate
Qwen3.5-4B	Q8_0	4.5 GB	98.5 estimate
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	Q8_0	36.9 GB	69.8 estimate
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	Q8_0	26.9 GB	53.5 estimate
MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.3 estimate
gemma-4-E4B-it	Q8_0	8.2 GB	53.9 estimate

With 128 GB unified memory

Model	Best quant that fits	File	Expected tok/s
Qwen3.8-27B	Q8_0	29.0 GB	15.2 estimate
gemma-4-12B-it	Q8_0	12.7 GB	34.9 estimate
Qwen3.5-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.4 estimate
Qwen3.5-4B	Q8_0	4.5 GB	98.5 estimate
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	Q8_0	36.9 GB	69.8 estimate
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next	UD-IQ3_XXS	82.0 GB	5.4 estimate
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	Q8_0	26.9 GB	53.5 estimate
MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B	Q8_0	9.5 GB	46.3 estimate

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