Snowflake Arctic Instruct on Apple M5 Max (64 GB)

Can the Apple M5 Max (64 GB) run Snowflake Arctic Instruct?

4 pts

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Snowflake Arctic Instruct needs about 196 GB even at Q2_K; the Apple M5 Max (64 GB) has 48.0 GB usable.

Download Snowflake Arctic Instruct

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-instruct (opens in a new tab)

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Links checked 7 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.	4.7 / 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	4.7 / 100	4 ptsWon't run (F) · 4 of 100 points: Model quality 4.7/45, 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 M5 Max (64 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Fit	Grade · points	Download
`Q2_K`	196 GB	48.0 GB	—	Won't run	4 ptsWon't run (F) · 4 of 100 points: Model quality 4.7/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	240 GB	48.0 GB	—	Won't run	5 ptsWon't run (F) · 5 of 100 points: Model quality 5.7/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	297 GB	48.0 GB	—	Won't run	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.4/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	345 GB	48.0 GB	—	Won't run	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.5/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	397 GB	48.0 GB	—	Won't run	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.7/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	512 GB	48.0 GB	—	Won't run	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.8/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	All files (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	962 GB	48.0 GB	—	Won't run	6 ptsWon't run (F) · 6 of 100 points: Model quality 6.8/45, Memory fit 0.0/25, Speed 0.0/15, Memory use 0.0/15	Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Memory figures assume 4K of context. Longer conversations or documents grow the KV cache.

Hardware that can run it

73 ptsGreat (A) · 73 of 100 points: Model quality 21.4/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 12.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Apple M3 Ultra (512 GB) Q4_K_M · 25.5 tok/s
54 ptsUsable (C) · 54 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 10.0/25, Speed 14.1/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB) Q2_K · 35.5 tok/s

Models that do run on the Apple M5 Max (64 GB)

96 ptsExcellent (S) · 96 of 100 points: Model quality 41.7/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Qwen3.6 35B-A3B Q6_K · 75.1 tok/s
96 ptsExcellent (S) · 96 of 100 points: Model quality 41.6/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Gemma 4 26B-A4B Q8_0 · 43.5 tok/s
96 ptsExcellent (S) · 96 of 100 points: Model quality 41.4/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Q6_K · 75.1 tok/s
95 ptsExcellent (S) · 95 of 100 points: Model quality 40.1/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Ornith 1.5 35B-A3B Q6_K · 75.1 tok/s
94 ptsExcellent (S) · 94 of 100 points: Model quality 39.6/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 15.0/15 Apodex 1.1 Mini (35B-A3B) Q6_K · 75.1 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.