Apple · apple

Apple M3

Apple M3 has 16 GB of unified memory at 102 GB/s — about 11.16 GiB usable after driver and compositor overhead. 1193 of 2118 indexed models fit at 64K context with f16 KV. Note only 12 GB of its 16 GB is allocatable to the GPU.

Spec sheet· bandwidth, theoreticalFrom the file· fit from summed bytesPredicted· speed
Memory
16 GB
LPDDR5-6400
Bandwidth
102 GB/s
128-bit bus
Tensor FP16
—
dense
TDP
—
Context4K8K16K32K64K128K
KV cachef16q8_0q4_0quantizing the KV cache is a ~2× lever on the dominant term at long context
text 983video 15vision language 111embedding 25audio asr 38audio tts 20image 1

What fits at 64K context

largest quantization that fits, per model · 1193 of 2118 indexed
ModelBest quantParamsWeights●KV●Total in memory◐Headroom◐tok/s◐
Qwen3-16B-A3BMoEUD-IQ2_M16.0B5.45 GiB6.00 GiB12.00 GiB0.00 GiB7±37%
Wan2.1-VACE-14BQ5_K_S17.3B11.41 GiB0.00 GiB12.00 GiB0.00 GiB7±8.3%
zeta-2.1I1-IQ3_XS8.3B3.40 GiB8.00 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Anubis-Mini-8B-v1IQ3_XS8.0B3.40 GiB8.00 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Goetia-26B-A4B-v1.3-Absolute-Heretic-ARAMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Frank-26B-A4BMoEI1-IQ2_XXS26.5B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
G4-MeroMero-26B-A4B-it-uncensored-hereticMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
EVE-26b-XENO-HATMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Gemma-4-26B-A4B-Animus-V14.1-FFT-hereticMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-qat-q4_0-unquantized-hereticMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Huihui-gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-qat-q4_0-unquantized-abliteratedMoEI1-IQ2_XXS26.5B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
G4-MeroMero-26B-A4BMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
G4-Dark-Soul-26B-A4BMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-local-abliterated-sota-internal-t34MoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-SOMPOA-heresyMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-hereticMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-abliterixMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-heretic-ara-v2MoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-heretic-antislopMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-Claude-Opus-Distill-v2MoEI1-IQ2_XXS26.5B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-Heretic-StableMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-Uncensored-MAXMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-ultra-uncensored-hereticMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-ara-abliteratedMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Huihui-gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-abliteratedMoEI1-IQ2_XXS26.5B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Gemma-4-26B-A4B-AbliteratedMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma4-26b-fiction-bf16MoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-heretic-araMoEI1-IQ2_XXS25.8B8.66 GiB2.79 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Qianfan-OCRQ4_K_S4.7B2.43 GiB9.00 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
granite-8b-code-instruct-4kI1-IQ2_S8.1B2.40 GiB9.00 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
granite-8b-code-base-4kI1-IQ2_S8.1B2.40 GiB9.00 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
CycleGRPO-4BI1-Q4_K_S4.8B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.99 GiB0.01 GiB7±8.3%
Jan-v3-4B-base-instructQ4_K_S4.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-4B-BaseQ4_K_S4.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Ministral-3-8B-Instruct-2512-BF16-abliteratedI1-IQ2_M8.9B2.89 GiB8.50 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Amaretto-8BI1-IQ2_M8.9B2.89 GiB8.50 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Jan-code-4bIQ4_NL4.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
OLMoE-1B-7B-0924-InstructMoEI1-IQ4_XS6.9B3.46 GiB8.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB6±37%
Ling-mini-2.0MoEQ4_K_S16.3B8.94 GiB2.50 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB14±37%
Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct-Unredacted-MAXI1-Q4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-VL-4B-ThinkingQ4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-VL-4B-Thinking-Unredacted-MAXI1-Q4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Zubr1.0-VL-4BI1-Q4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Huihui-Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct-abliteratedI1-Q4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct-UncensoredI1-Q4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-VL-4B-InstructQ4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
OpenCaption-4B-VL-SFT-v1.0I1-Q4_14.4B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Parable-Qwen3-4B-Claude-Fable-5I1-Q4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Jan-v1-4BQ4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-4b-Z-Image-Turbo-AbliteratedV1I1-Q4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-4BQ4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507Q4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Jan-nano-128kQ4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507Q4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Jan-nanoQ4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-4B-abliteratedQ4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Neuron-4B-InstructI1-Q4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
ChineseErrorCorrector4-4BI1-Q4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
Qwen3-4B-Qwen3.6-plus-Reasoning-DistilledQ4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
FastContext-1.0-4B-SFT-abliteratedI1-Q4_14.0B2.42 GiB9.00 GiB11.98 GiB0.02 GiB7±8.3%
●From the file◐Predictedwhat these mean

Speed is modeled, not measured: decode is memory-bandwidth bound, so tokens per second is bytes read per token against achievable bandwidth. Mixture-of-experts models carry a wider band because only the routed experts are read each step, and few have been measured publicly.

Questions people ask

What AI models can a Apple M3 run?
1193 of 2118 indexed open-weight models fit a Apple M3 at 65,536 context with f16 KV cache, the largest being Qwen3-16B-A3B at UD-IQ2_M. That covers text, vision-language, image, video and speech models.
How much usable memory does a Apple M3 actually have?
Its nameplate is 16 GB, but about 11.16 GiB is available to a model once driver and compositor overhead is accounted for, and only 12 GB of the pool can be allocated to the GPU at all.
Is a Apple M3 fast for local AI?
Its memory bandwidth is 102 GB/s, and that figure — not teraflops — is what governs token generation speed. Capacity decides what you can run; bandwidth decides how fast it runs.