Can the Apple M3 Ultra (512 GB) run Gemma 4 12B?

Yes, it runs great

Runs great. At Q6_K it needs about 41.8 GB of 384 GB usable, with an estimated speed of 50.2 tok/s.

Best quant: Q6_K
Generation speed: 50.2 tok/s
Prompt processing: 1,472 tok/s
First token (1K prompt): 0.7 s
Largest safe context: 256K

Best app to run it on the Apple M3 Ultra (512 GB)

On macOS

LM Studio

Desktop app · runs on llama.cpp, MLX · use the MLX build

Runs the MLX build, typically 10–20% faster than GGUF for a model with 12B active parameters on Apple silicon.
Point-and-click: search, download and chat in one window.

Open Gemma 4 12B in LM Studio

Ollama One command with Ollama’s own build of this model.
llama.cpp Usually the first to support new model architectures.

Want an agent? Gemma 4 12B supports tool use, so you can pair a llama.cpp or MLX LM server with one of these. Apps that run on this computer come first.

Coding agents

Personal assistants

How we choose: the files published for this model, your operating system and GPU, whether it fits fully in memory, and published speed tests (MLX vs llama.cpp on Apple silicon, vLLM vs llama.cpp vs Ollama on NVIDIA). Details.

Download Gemma 4 12B

Recommended for the Apple M3 Ultra (512 GB): Q6_K. Every other quantization has its own download link in the table below.

Quickest · Ollama

One command downloads a ready-to-run version and starts a chat.

Get Ollama at ollama.com/download (opens in a new tab) · model page (opens in a new tab)

ollama run gemma4:12b

Quantized files · GGUF

Works in LM Studio, llama.cpp, Jan and Ollama. No sign-in needed.

Download the Q6_K file (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/unsloth/gemma-4-12B-it-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/unsloth/gemma-4-12B-it-GGUF:Q6_K

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/google/gemma-4-12B-it (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

Reference code, inference scripts and docs from Google. The weights themselves download from Hugging Face.

github.com/google-deepmind/gemma (opens in a new tab)

Google DeepMind’s official Gemma library.

git clone https://github.com/google-deepmind/gemma

Links checked 2 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 82Great quality (A) · 82 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 79/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.: How capable the model itself is at Q6_K, from its editorial quality tier scaled by the quantization or precision. It’s the same on any hardware that runs this variant. Scale: A+ 85+ · A 70+ · B 55+ · C 40+ · D under 40.
Runs Runs great: How well it runs on the Apple M3 Ultra (512 GB): speed, capped by how well it fits in memory. Runs great: 30+ tokens/s (or near the image, video or decision speed target) · Runs well: 10+ tokens/s · Slow: 3+ tokens/s · Very slow: under 3 · Won’t run: doesn’t fit even with offload. A tight fit or RAM offload caps it at Runs well; heavy offload caps it at Slow.

Match score

To order lists, each result also gets a match score out of 100 from four parts. It favors the most capable model that still runs well.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.	37.0 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when the model fits in the share of unified memory the GPU can use; fewer when it goes past that limit.	25.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.	15.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.	2.5 / 15
Match score	79.5 / 100

The match score orders results; it is not shown as a grade. Quality and Runs are the two ratings in the tables.

Every quantization on the Apple M3 Ultra (512 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Runs	Quality	Download
`Q2_K`	36.8 GB	384 GB	119 tok/s	Runs great	58Good quality (B) · 58 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 68/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (UD-Q2_K_XL) (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	37.9 GB	384 GB	93.6 tok/s	Runs great	69Good quality (B) · 69 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 73/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	39.3 GB	384 GB	72.4 tok/s	Runs great	78Great quality (A) · 78 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 77/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	40.5 GB	384 GB	59.8 tok/s	Runs great	80Great quality (A) · 80 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 78/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	41.8 GB	384 GB	50.2 tok/s	Runs great	82Great quality (A) · 82 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 79/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	44.7 GB	384 GB	36.8 tok/s	Runs great	83Great quality (A) · 83 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 79/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	55.9 GB	384 GB	17.0 tok/s	Runs well	83Great quality (A) · 83 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab) Original weights (opens in a new tab)

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

Other hardware that runs it

83Great quality (A) · 83 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 92/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 F16 · 43.2 tok/s · Runs great
82Great quality (A) · 82 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 91/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Q6_K · 47.9 tok/s · Runs great
82Great quality (A) · 82 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 91/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Q6_K · 52.4 tok/s · Runs great
82Great quality (A) · 82 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 91/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Q6_K · 63.8 tok/s · Runs great
82Great quality (A) · 82 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 91/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Q6_K · 68.4 tok/s · Runs great
83Great quality (A) · 83 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 91/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Q8_0 · 43.2 tok/s · Runs great

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.