nomic-embed-text v1.5 on Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified)
Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified) handles nomic-embed-text v1.5 well at 600 tok/s at Q8_0. A solid choice for this model.
Model Size
137M
Device VRAM
18 GB
Bandwidth
150 GB/s
Quantizations Tested
1
Performance by Quantization
Each row shows nomic-embed-text v1.5 performance at a different quality level on Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified).
| Quantization | Speed | TTFT | Fits in VRAM | Rating | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q8_0 | 600 tok/s | 50ms | ✓ Yes | Good | estimated |
Notes
Q8_0
Embedding throughput limited by 150 GB/s. Good for RAG pipelines.
About nomic-embed-text v1.5
nomic-embed-text v1.5 (137M) is a embeddings, ai building model. High-quality text embedding model for RAG pipelines. 137M params — negligible VRAM. Competitive with OpenAI's ada-002 on MTEB benchmarks. Essential for builders running local RAG with Cursor or similar tools. Can run concurrently with coding models without meaningful VRAM impact.
View all nomic-embed-text v1.5 hardware options →About Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified)
Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified) has 18 GB at 150 GB/s. Available in MacBook Pro 14", MacBook Pro 16".
See all models Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified) can run →Source: MLX performance estimates (2026-03-15)
Data last updated: 2026-03-01