Apple M4 Max meets the minimum VRAM requirement for Q4 inference of deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B. Review the quantization breakdown below to see how higher precision settings impact VRAM and throughput.
Apple M4 Max can run deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B with Q4 quantization. At approximately 74 tokens/second, you can expect Good speed - acceptable for interactive use.
You have 124GB headroom, which is sufficient for system overhead and smooth operation.
| Quantization | VRAM needed | VRAM available | Estimated speed | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 | 4GB | 128GB | 74.04 tok/s | ✅ Fits comfortably |
| Q8 | 9GB | 128GB | 52.62 tok/s | ✅ Fits comfortably |
| FP16 | 17GB | 128GB | 29.24 tok/s | ✅ Fits comfortably |