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Llama 3.2 1B Instruct on Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified)

Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) runs Llama 3.2 1B Instruct excellently at 150 tok/s at Q8_0. This is a strong pairing.

Model Size

1.24B

Device VRAM

36 GB

Bandwidth

546 GB/s

Quantizations Tested

1

Performance by Quantization

Each row shows Llama 3.2 1B Instruct performance at a different quality level on Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified).

QuantizationSpeedTTFTFits in VRAMRatingConfidence
Q8_0150 tok/s30ms✓ YesExcellentestimated

Notes

Q8_0

546 GB/s delivers strong 1B speed. Excellent for Mac inference.

About Llama 3.2 1B Instruct

Llama 3.2 1B Instruct (1.24B) is a chat, coding model. The smallest Llama model. Runs on integrated GPUs and even CPUs. Useful for basic classification, simple Q&A, and as a draft model for speculative decoding. Limited reasoning capability.

View all Llama 3.2 1B Instruct hardware options →

About Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified)

Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) has 36 GB at 546 GB/s. Available in MacBook Pro 16", Mac Studio.

See all models Apple M4 Max (36GB Unified) can run →

Source: MLX performance estimates based on device bandwidth (2026-03-15)

Data last updated: 2026-03-15