Phi-3.5-mini on Apple M3 Max · 36GB

✅ Runs comfortably — Phi-3.5-mini 3.8B @ Q8_0
Phi-3.5-mini 3.8B at Q8_0 needs ~7.3 GB (weights 3.8 GB + KV 3.0 GB + overhead 512 MB @ 8K ctx) of your 21.1 GB usable (of 36.0 GB unified memory) — plenty of headroom. Expect ~25–45 tok/s (fast).
context @ Q8_0: comfortable to 32K · runs to 64K · won't fit past that on this rig
quantneedsspeed
✓ Q8_07.3 GB~25–45 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q5_K_M6.0 GB~30–55 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q4_K_M5.7 GB~35–55 tok/s (fast)
$runlocal install phi3.5:3.8b
runlocal verdict card
download card share on x share on reddit drop it in your model-drop post
Phi-3.5-mini: Runs comfortably
for your own README — links back here

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

Also runs on a Apple M3 Max: Qwen3 · DeepSeek-R1 (distill) · Qwen2.5 · Gemma 4 · Gemma 3

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