DeepSeek on Apple M3
Can I run DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 8B on an Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB?
Yes. DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 8B at Q4_K_M uses 6.1 GB of the 192.0 GB available on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB, and runs at about 90.9 tokens per second. You can push the context to 128K.
Runs comfortably
6.1 GB of 192.0 GB · 3%0192 GB
Weights
4.6 GB
KV cache
1.0 GB
Runtime overhead
0.5 GB
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 8B at Q4_K_M leaves 185.9 GB spare on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB. There is room to raise the context length or move up a quantisation level.
Generation90.9tok/s
Prompt processing1491tok/s
Max context128Ktokens
KV per 1K tokens0GB
Every quantisation of DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 8B on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB
Highlighted row is the highest quality that still fits at 8K context.
| Quantisation | bpw | Weights | Total | Verdict | Max ctx | tok/s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 / BF16 | 16.00 | 15.0 GB | 16.5 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 30.4 |
| INT8 / W8A8 | 8.50 | 7.7 GB | 9.2 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 57.0 |
| Q8_0 (GGUF) | 8.50 | 7.7 GB | 9.2 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 57.0 |
| FP8 (E4M3) | 8.00 | 7.5 GB | 9.0 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 58.6 |
| Q6_K | 6.56 | 6.1 GB | 7.7 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 70.4 |
| AWQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 5.4 GB | 6.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 78.9 |
| GPTQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 5.4 GB | 6.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 78.9 |
| MXFP4 | 4.25 | 5.4 GB | 6.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 78.9 |
| Q5_K_M | 5.67 | 5.3 GB | 6.8 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 80.3 |
| Q5_K_S | 5.52 | 5.2 GB | 6.7 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 82.3 |
| Q4_K_M | 4.85 | 4.6 GB | 6.1 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 90.9 |
| Q4_K_S | 4.58 | 4.4 GB | 5.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 94.9 |
| Q4_0 | 4.55 | 4.4 GB | 5.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 95.4 |
| IQ4_XS | 4.25 | 4.1 GB | 5.6 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 100 |
| Q3_K_M | 3.91 | 3.8 GB | 5.4 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 107 |
| IQ3_M | 3.70 | 3.7 GB | 5.2 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 111 |
| IQ3_XXS | 3.06 | 3.2 GB | 4.7 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 126 |
| Q2_K | 2.63 | 2.8 GB | 4.3 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 139 |
| IQ2_XXS | 2.06 | 2.3 GB | 3.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 161 |
| IQ1_M | 1.75 | 2.1 GB | 3.6 GB | Runs comfortably | 128K | 176 |