Rent a GPU

Can the Apple M5 (16GB) run Qwen3 8B?

Apple M5 (16GB) × Qwen3 8B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at Q8_010.5 GB of 10.7 GB
Weights 8.7 GBKV cache 1.2 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantQ8_0Near-lossless
Speed~11tokens per second
Max context8Ktokens that fit at Q8_0
  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 M5 (16GB) can run Qwen3 8B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 10.5 GB of the 10.7 GB available, at roughly 11 tokens/second.

Try other context lengths

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Qwen3 8B:

ollama run qwen3:8b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 6.8 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 M5 (16GB)

Run it in the cloud

No Apple M5 (16GB)? Run Qwen3 8B 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 10.7 GB the Apple M5 (16GB) can use. macOS lets the GPU use about 10.7 GB of the 16 GB unified memory by default.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality18.2 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless10.5 GBFits~11 tok/s
Q6_KExcellent8.5 GBFits~14 tok/s
Q5_K_MVery good7.6 GBFits~16 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular6.8 GBFits~18 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded5.8 GBFits~23 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded4.9 GBFits~30 tok/s

Measured speed from real Apple M5 (16GB) owners

Tokens per second that people measured on their own Apple M5 (16GB), next to our estimate.

No one has measured Qwen3 8B on the Apple M5 (16GB) yet. The speeds above are estimates. Run the benchmark and yours becomes the first real number on this page.

Have an Apple M5 (16GB)? Add your real speed

One command times Qwen3 8B in your own Ollama, shows you exactly what it would send, and asks before sending anything. No sign-up, no personal data.

macOS and Linux

curl -fsSL https://gpufit.dev/bench.sh | sh -s -- qwen3:8b

Windows (PowerShell)

$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="qwen3:8b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iex

How the benchmark works

GPUs that run Qwen3 8B comfortably

Models that run well on the Apple M5 (16GB)

Frequently asked questions

Can Apple M5 (16GB) run Qwen3 8B?

Yes. The Apple M5 (16GB) can run Qwen3 8B fully in unified memory at Q8_0 (near-lossless), using about 10.5 GB of the 10.7 GB available, at roughly 11 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Qwen3 8B need?

About 6.8 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 18.2 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Qwen3 8B on the Apple M5 (16GB)?

Roughly 11 tokens per second at Q8_0, estimated from the Apple M5 (16GB)'s 153 GB/s memory bandwidth.