Mixtral 8x7B on Apple M1 · 8GB

❌ Won't fit — Mixtral 8x7B @ Q3_K_M
Mixtral 8x7B 8x7B (MoE) at Q3_K_M needs ~23.3 GB (weights 21.3 GB + KV 1.0 GB + overhead 1.1 GB @ 8K ctx) — more than your 2.9 GB usable of 8.0 GB unified. Try a smaller model or a lower quant.
quantneedsspeed
✗ Q8_049.5 GB—
✗ Q5_K_M33.5 GB—
✗ Q4_K_M28.7 GB—
✗ Q3_K_M23.3 GB—

Won't fit here — what hardware runs Mixtral 8x7B? →

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Mixtral 8x7B: Won't fit
for your own README — links back here

Same model, other machines: Apple M1 Pro · Apple M2 · Apple M3 Pro · Apple M2 Pro · Apple M4 Pro · Apple M3 Max

Also runs on a Apple M1: DeepSeek-R1 (distill) · Qwen2.5 · Qwen3 · Llama 3.2 · Gemma 2

Best models for a Apple M1 · 8GB →

Architecturally similar

These share Mixtral 8x7B's KV-cache geometry — they size memory the same way, so here's how they fit on a Apple M1 · 8GB too:

modelsharesverdict here
Llama 3.1 8kv/128hd 🐢 CPU-only (slow)
Qwen2.5-Coder 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Llama 3.3 8kv/128hd ❌ Won't fit
Mistral 7B 8kv/128hd 🐢 CPU-only (slow)
Mistral Small 3 8kv/128hd ❌ Won't fit
Mistral Nemo 8kv/128hd ❌ Won't fit
Codestral 8kv/128hd ❌ Won't fit
Llama 3.2 Vision 8kv/128hd ❌ Won't fit

…and 7 more — see the Mixtral 8x7B page.

Check any combo yourself: open the checker →