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Can the Apple M2 Ultra (192GB) run Qwen2.5 72B?

Apple M2 Ultra (192GB) × Qwen2.5 72B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at Q8_080.5 GB of 144 GB
Weights 77.2 GBKV cache 2.7 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantQ8_0Near-lossless
Memory80.5 GBof 144 GB usable
Speed~6tokens per second
  1. FP16
  2. Q8_0
  3. Q6_K
  4. Q5_K_M
  5. Q4_K_M
  6. Q3_K_M
  7. Q2_K

Yes. The Apple M2 Ultra (192GB) can run Qwen2.5 72B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 80.5 GB of the 144 GB available, at roughly 6 tokens/second.

Try other context lengths

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Qwen2.5 72B:

ollama run qwen2.5:72b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 47.4 GB here). You have room for Q8_0, which is near-lossless: pick that GGUF in LM Studio or from Hugging Face.

New to this? Step-by-step setup for the Apple M2 Ultra (192GB)

Run it in the cloud

No Apple M2 Ultra (192GB)? Run Qwen2.5 72B in the cloud.

Rent a cloud GPU by the hour. No upfront cost, stop any time.

Rent a GPU on RunPodRent a GPU on Vast.ai

Memory needed by quantization

At 8,192 tokens of context. The black line marks the 144 GB the Apple M2 Ultra (192GB) can use. macOS lets the GPU use about 144 GB of the 192 GB unified memory by default.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality148.7 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless80.5 GBFits~6 tok/s
Q6_KExcellent62.9 GBFits~8 tok/s
Q5_K_MVery good55 GBFits~9 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular47.4 GBFits~11 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded38.8 GBFits~14 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded30.5 GBFits~18 tok/s

GPUs that run Qwen2.5 72B comfortably

Models that run well on the Apple M2 Ultra (192GB)

Frequently asked questions

Can Apple M2 Ultra (192GB) run Qwen2.5 72B?

Yes. The Apple M2 Ultra (192GB) can run Qwen2.5 72B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 80.5 GB of the 144 GB available, at roughly 6 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Qwen2.5 72B need?

About 47.4 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 148.7 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Qwen2.5 72B on the Apple M2 Ultra (192GB)?

Roughly 6 tokens per second at Q8_0, estimated from the Apple M2 Ultra (192GB)'s 800 GB/s memory bandwidth.