Can the Apple M4 (16GB) run Phi-4 14B?

Yes, with heavy quantization
QuantQ3_K_MNoticeably degraded
Memory9.5 GBof 10.7 GB
Speed~10tokens/s

Only just. Phi-4 14B fits on the Apple M4 (16GB) at Q3_K_M, which costs noticeable quality. Expect about 10 tokens/second. A card with more memory is a better experience.

Try other context lengths in the calculator →
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Memory needed by quantization

At 8,192 tokens of context. macOS lets the GPU use about 10.7 GB of the 16 GB unified memory by default.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality31.7 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless17.9 GBToo big—
Q6_KExcellent14.3 GBToo big—
Q5_K_MVery good12.7 GBToo big—
Q4_K_MGood, most popular11.2 GBToo big—
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded9.5 GBFits~10 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded7.8 GBFits~13 tok/s

How to run Phi-4 14B on the Apple M4 (16GB)

Ollama's default phi4:14b download is Q4_K_M, which needs about 11.2 GB, more than the 10.7 GB available. Download the Q3_K_M GGUF instead (LM Studio lists quants per model), or try a smaller context length.

GPUs that run Phi-4 14B comfortably

Check NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB prices →

Models that run well on the Apple M4 (16GB)