Can the Apple M2 (8 GB) run Apertus v1.5 70B?

6 pts

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Apertus v1.5 70B needs about 32.5 GB even at Q2_K; the Apple M2 (8 GB) has 5.4 GB usable.

Download Apertus v1.5 70B

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from Swiss AI, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers.

huggingface.co/swiss-ai/Apertus-v1.5-70B (opens in a new tab)

Free Hugging Face account needed: accept the license on the model page and the download starts right away.

Links checked 5 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How the F grade is scored

Every result gets up to 100 points from four parts. The points decide the letter grade.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.	6.2 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when everything sits in GPU or unified memory; fewer when part spills to system RAM.	0.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.	0.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.	0.0 / 15
Total	6.2 / 100	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.2/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15

It doesn’t fit, so only a reduced share of the quality points counts and fit, speed and memory use score zero.

Grade scale: S 85+ · A 72+ · B 58+ · C 42+ · D 25+ · F under 25 points.

Every quantization on the Apple M2 (8 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Fit	Grade · points	Download
`Q2_K`	32.5 GB	5.4 GB	—	Won't run	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.2/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	39.0 GB	5.4 GB	—	Won't run	7 ptsWon't run (F) · 7 of 100 points: Model quality 7.5/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	47.6 GB	5.4 GB	—	Won't run	8 ptsWon't run (F) · 8 of 100 points: Model quality 8.5/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	54.8 GB	5.4 GB	—	Won't run	8 ptsWon't run (F) · 8 of 100 points: Model quality 8.6/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	62.8 GB	5.4 GB	—	Won't run	8 ptsWon't run (F) · 8 of 100 points: Model quality 8.8/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	80.0 GB	5.4 GB	—	Won't run	8 ptsWon't run (F) · 8 of 100 points: Model quality 8.9/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	148 GB	5.4 GB	—	Won't run	8 ptsWon't run (F) · 8 of 100 points: Model quality 8.9/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Memory figures assume 8K of context. Longer conversations or documents grow the KV cache.

Hardware that can run it

78 ptsGreat (A) · 78 of 100 points: Model quality 28.2/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 13.1/15, Memory use 12.5/15 NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Q4_K_M · 30.5 tok/s
74 ptsGreat (A) · 74 of 100 points: Model quality 29.4/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 5.6/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Apple M4 Max (128 GB) Q6_K · 5.6 tok/s
73 ptsGreat (A) · 73 of 100 points: Model quality 29.4/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 3.8/15, Memory use 15.0/15 AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (128 GB) Q6_K · 2.6 tok/s
72 ptsGreat (A) · 72 of 100 points: Model quality 29.4/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 4.3/15, Memory use 14.3/15 NVIDIA GB10 (128 GB) Q6_K · 3.2 tok/s
71 ptsGood (B) · 71 of 100 points: Model quality 24.9/45, Memory fit 24.0/25, Speed 7.6/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Apple M4 Max (64 GB) Q3_K_M · 10.4 tok/s
70 ptsGood (B) · 70 of 100 points: Model quality 28.2/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 8.1/15, Memory use 9.4/15 Apple M2 Ultra (192 GB) Q4_K_M · 11.7 tok/s

Models that do run on the Apple M2 (8 GB)

77 ptsGreat (A) · 77 of 100 points: Model quality 26.1/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 11.9/15, Memory use 15.0/15 TMax 4B Q4_K_M · 25.1 tok/s
77 ptsGreat (A) · 77 of 100 points: Model quality 26.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 11.3/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Qwen3.5 4B Q4_K_M · 22.7 tok/s
77 ptsGreat (A) · 77 of 100 points: Model quality 26.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 10.8/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Gemma 4 E2B Q4_K_M · 20.6 tok/s
77 ptsGreat (A) · 77 of 100 points: Model quality 25.7/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 11.4/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Agents-A1 4B Q4_K_M · 23.3 tok/s
76 ptsGreat (A) · 76 of 100 points: Model quality 22.7/45, Memory fit 24.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Ling 3.0 Tiny (8B-A1.3B) Q3_K_M · 52.6 tok/s

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.