Apple M3 Max meets the minimum VRAM requirement for Q4 inference of Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct. Review the quantization breakdown below to see how higher precision settings impact VRAM and throughput.
Apple M3 Max can run Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct with Q4 quantization. At approximately 49 tokens/second, you can expect Moderate speed - useful for batch processing.
You have 125GB headroom, which is sufficient for system overhead and smooth operation.
| Quantization | VRAM needed | VRAM available | Estimated speed | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 | 3GB | 128GB | 49.25 tok/s | ✅ Fits comfortably |
| Q8 | 5GB | 128GB | 39.98 tok/s | ✅ Fits comfortably |
| FP16 | 11GB | 128GB | 21.75 tok/s | ✅ Fits comfortably |