Qwen2.5 72B Instruct on Apple M2 Pro (32 GB)

Can the Apple M2 Pro (32 GB) run Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

6 pts

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct needs about 34.1 GB even at Q2_K; the Apple M2 Pro (32 GB) has 21.4 GB usable.

Download Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

Recommended: Q2_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.

ollama run qwen2.5:72b-instruct-q2_K

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

Quantized files · GGUF

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

Download the Q2_K file (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct-GGUF:Q2_K

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

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

github.com/QwenLM/Qwen3 (opens in a new tab)

git clone https://github.com/QwenLM/Qwen3

Qwen’s main repo, renamed from Qwen2.5 to Qwen3; it still documents Qwen2.5.

Links checked 1 week 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.	6.9 / 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	6.9 / 100	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.9/45, 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 Pro (32 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Fit	Grade · points	Download
`Q2_K`	34.1 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.9/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	GGUF · part 1 of 7 (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	40.6 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	8 ptsWon't run (F) · 8 of 100 points: Model quality 8.3/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	GGUF · part 1 of 9 (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	49.3 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	9 ptsWon't run (F) · 9 of 100 points: Model quality 9.4/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	GGUF · part 1 of 12 (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	56.6 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	9 ptsWon't run (F) · 9 of 100 points: Model quality 9.6/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	GGUF · part 1 of 14 (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	64.6 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	9 ptsWon't run (F) · 9 of 100 points: Model quality 9.8/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	GGUF · part 1 of 16 (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	82.1 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	9 ptsWon't run (F) · 9 of 100 points: Model quality 9.9/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	GGUF · part 1 of 21 (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	150 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	9 ptsWon't run (F) · 9 of 100 points: Model quality 9.9/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	GGUF · part 1 of 42 (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.

Hardware that can run it

81 ptsGreat (A) · 81 of 100 points: Model quality 31.2/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 13.0/15, Memory use 12.6/15 NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Q4_K_M · 30.3 tok/s
78 ptsGreat (A) · 78 of 100 points: Model quality 32.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 5.6/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Apple M4 Max (128 GB) Q6_K · 5.5 tok/s
76 ptsGreat (A) · 76 of 100 points: Model quality 32.5/45, 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
76 ptsGreat (A) · 76 of 100 points: Model quality 32.5/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 4.2/15, Memory use 14.4/15 NVIDIA GB10 (128 GB) Q6_K · 3.2 tok/s
74 ptsGreat (A) · 74 of 100 points: Model quality 27.6/45, Memory fit 24.0/25, Speed 7.6/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Apple M4 Max (64 GB) Q3_K_M · 10.3 tok/s
73 ptsGreat (A) · 73 of 100 points: Model quality 31.2/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 8.1/15, Memory use 9.5/15 Apple M2 Ultra (192 GB) Q4_K_M · 11.6 tok/s

Models that do run on the Apple M2 Pro (32 GB)

91 ptsExcellent (S) · 91 of 100 points: Model quality 39.5/45, Memory fit 24.0/25, Speed 12.5/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Gemma 4 26B-A4B Q4_K_M · 27.8 tok/s
89 ptsExcellent (S) · 89 of 100 points: Model quality 35.3/45, Memory fit 24.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Qwen3.6 35B-A3B Q3_K_M · 45.6 tok/s
89 ptsExcellent (S) · 89 of 100 points: Model quality 35.2/45, Memory fit 24.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Q3_K_M · 45.6 tok/s
88 ptsExcellent (S) · 88 of 100 points: Model quality 33.3/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 GLM-4.7 Flash (30B-A3B) Q3_K_M · 45.6 tok/s
88 ptsExcellent (S) · 88 of 100 points: Model quality 34.0/45, Memory fit 24.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Ornith 1.5 35B-A3B Q3_K_M · 45.6 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.