Gemma on Apple M4

Can I run Gemma 3 12B on an Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB?

Yes. Gemma 3 12B at Q4_K_M uses 8.3 GB of the 36.0 GB available on a Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB, and runs at about 23.2 tokens per second. You can push the context to 128K.

Runs comfortably

8.3 GB of 36.0 GB · 23%
036 GB
Weights 7.0 GB
KV cache 0.8 GB
Runtime overhead 0.5 GB

Gemma 3 12B at Q4_K_M leaves 27.7 GB spare on a Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB. There is room to raise the context length or move up a quantisation level.

Generation23.2tok/s
Prompt processing293tok/s
Max context128Ktokens
KV per 1K tokens0GB

Every quantisation of Gemma 3 12B on a Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB

Highlighted row is the highest quality that still fits at 8K context.

QuantisationbpwWeights TotalVerdictMax ctxtok/s
FP16 / BF16 16.00 22.7 GB 24.1 GB Runs comfortably 128K 7.53
INT8 / W8A8 8.50 11.8 GB 13.2 GB Runs comfortably 128K 14.1
Q8_0 (GGUF) 8.50 11.8 GB 13.2 GB Runs comfortably 128K 14.1
FP8 (E4M3) 8.00 11.4 GB 12.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 14.7
Q6_K 6.56 9.3 GB 10.6 GB Runs comfortably 128K 17.7
Q5_K_M 5.67 8.1 GB 9.4 GB Runs comfortably 128K 20.3
Q5_K_S 5.52 7.8 GB 9.2 GB Runs comfortably 128K 20.8
AWQ 4-bit 4.25 7.4 GB 8.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 21.9
GPTQ 4-bit 4.25 7.4 GB 8.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 21.9
MXFP4 4.25 7.4 GB 8.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 21.9
Q4_K_M 4.85 7.0 GB 8.3 GB Runs comfortably 128K 23.2
Q4_K_S 4.58 6.6 GB 7.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 24.3
Q4_0 4.55 6.6 GB 7.9 GB Runs comfortably 128K 24.4
IQ4_XS 4.25 6.2 GB 7.5 GB Runs comfortably 128K 25.8
Q3_K_M 3.91 5.7 GB 7.1 GB Runs comfortably 128K 27.7
IQ3_M 3.70 5.5 GB 6.8 GB Runs comfortably 128K 28.9
IQ3_XXS 3.06 4.6 GB 6.0 GB Runs comfortably 128K 33.5
Q2_K 2.63 4.1 GB 5.4 GB Runs comfortably 128K 37.5
IQ2_XXS 2.06 3.3 GB 4.7 GB Runs comfortably 128K 44.6
IQ1_M 1.75 2.9 GB 4.3 GB Runs comfortably 128K 49.6

Also worth checking

Gemma 3 12B on every GPU
Full hardware tableEverything that runs on a Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB
Full model tableWhy the KV cache is the part that bites
Guide