Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct on Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified)
Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified) cannot run Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct at any quantization level. The 18 GB of VRAM is insufficient.
Model Size
72.7B
Device VRAM
18 GB
Bandwidth
150 GB/s
Quantizations Tested
1
Performance by Quantization
Each row shows Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct performance at a different quality level on Apple M3 Pro (18GB Unified).
| Quantization | Speed | TTFT | Fits in VRAM | Rating | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q2_K | — | — | ✗ Offload | Not Viable | estimated |
Notes
Q2_K
72B doesn't fit in 18GB unified.
About Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct
Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct (72.7B) is a chat, coding, ai coding, reasoning, multi-purpose model. Top-tier 72B model, competitive with Llama 3.1 70B. Excellent at coding and structured output. Requires 48GB+ VRAM for usable quantizations.
View all Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct 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