Which model for Mac Apple Silicon 16 Go?
12 GB usable for the model (75% of unified memory). 62 open-weight models fit in memory.
The margin goes to context: count ~1 GB per 8k tokens for a 7B model. A small margin means a short context.
Unlocked by this setup
These models fit on no smaller setup in the catalogue (the next one down offers 8 usable GB), even in their lightest quantization.
| Model | Elo | Quantization | RAM required | Margin | Memory headroom | Run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 3 12BGoogle · 12B | 1342 | Q4_K_M | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | ollama run gemma3:12b |
| Phi-4Microsoft · 14.7B | 1256 | Q4_K_M | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | ollama run phi4 |
| Phi-4 ReasoningMicrosoft · 14.7B | 1256 | Q4_K_M | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | ollama run phi4-reasoning |
| FLUX.1 [dev]Black Forest Labs · 12B | — | Q4_K_M | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Gemma 4 12BGoogle · 12B | — | Q4_K_M | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Mistral Nemo 12BMistral AI · 12.2B | — | Q4_K_M | 10 Go | +2 Go | tight | ollama run mistral-nemo |
| Ministral 3 14BMistral AI · 14B | — | Q4_K_M | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Qwen3 14BAlibaba · 14.8B | — | Q4_K_M | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | ollama run qwen3:14b |
| DeepSeek-Coder-V2 LiteDeepSeek · 15.7B | — | Q4_K_M | 12 Go | +0 Go | tight | ollama run deepseek-coder-v2:16b |
| StarCoder 2BigCode · 16B | — | Q4_K_M | 12 Go | +0 Go | tight | ollama run starcoder2:15b |
Also fit on a smaller setup
| Model | Elo | Quantization | RAM required | Margin | Memory headroom | Run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 3n E4BGoogle · 4B | 1318 | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 11 Go | 5 Go | +7 Go | comfortable | ollama run gemma3n:e4b |
| Granite 4.1 8BIBM · 8B | 1304 | Q8_0 | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Gemma 3 4BGoogle · 4B | 1303 | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 11 Go | 5 Go | +7 Go | comfortable | ollama run gemma3:4b |
| Ministral 8BMistral AI · 8.02B | 1238 | Q8_0 | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Llama 3.1 8BMeta · 8.03B | 1211 | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 11 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run llama3.1:8b |
| Llama 3.2 3BMeta · 3.21B | 1167 | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 9 Go | 4 Go | +8 Go | comfortable | ollama run llama3.2:3b |
| Llama 3.2 1BMeta · 1.24B | 1111 | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 5 Go | 3 Go | +9 Go | comfortable | ollama run llama3.2:1b |
| Mistral 7BMistral AI · 7.25B | 1110 | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 11 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run mistral:7b |
Not yet ranked by the Arena
No Arena Elo linked: recent release, model absent from the Arena, or a match we have not made yet.
| Model | Elo | Quantization | RAM required | Margin | Memory headroom | Run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 0.6BAlibaba · 0.6B | — | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 3 Go | 2 Go | +10 Go | comfortable | ollama run qwen3:0.6b |
| Gemma 3 1BGoogle · 1B | — | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 4 Go | 3 Go | +9 Go | comfortable | ollama run gemma3:1b |
| Phi-4 MiniMicrosoft · 3.8B | — | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 10 Go | 4 Go | +8 Go | comfortable | ollama run phi4-mini |
| Qwen3 4BAlibaba · 4.02B | — | Q4_K_MFP16 also fits · 11 Go | 5 Go | +7 Go | comfortable | ollama run qwen3:4b |
| Gemma 4 E2BGoogle · 2B | — | FP16 | 6 Go | +6 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| CodeGemma 7BGoogle · 8.5B | — | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 12 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run codegemma |
| Command R7BCohere · 8B | — | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 11 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run command-r7b |
| DeepSeek-R1 Distill 8BDeepSeek · 8.03B | — | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 11 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run deepseek-r1:8b |
| Granite 3.3 8BIBM · 8.1B | — | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 12 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run granite3.3:8b |
| Hermes 3 8BNous Research · 8.03B | — | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 11 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run hermes3:8b |
| MiniCPM5-2BOpenBMB · 2.5B | — | FP16 | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Qwen3 8BAlibaba · 8.2B | — | Q4_K_MQ8_0 also fits · 12 Go | 7 Go | +5 Go | comfortable | ollama run qwen3:8b |
| EuroLLM 9BUTTER Project · 9.15B | — | Q4_K_M | 8 Go | +4 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Falcon 3 10BTII · 10.3B | — | Q4_K_M | 8 Go | +4 Go | comfortable | ollama run falcon3:10b |
| Granite 4.1 3BIBM · 3B | — | FP16 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Ministral 3 3BMistral AI · 3B | — | FP16 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| SmolLM3 3BHugging Face · 3.1B | — | FP16 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Lucie 7BOpenLLM France · 6.7B | — | Q8_0 | 10 Go | +2 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| OLMo 3 7BAllen AI · 7B | — | Q8_0 | 10 Go | +2 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Apertus 8BSwiss AI · 8B | — | Q8_0 | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Gemma 4 E4BGoogle · 4B | — | FP16 | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Ministral 3 8BMistral AI · 8B | — | Q8_0 | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| InternLM3 8BShanghai AI Lab · 8.8B | — | Q8_0 | 12 Go | +0 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
Image, video, audio and 3D
These models do not generate text, so the text Arena does not rank them. Indicative order, not a quality ranking.
| Model | Elo | Quantization | RAM required | Margin | Memory headroom | Run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kokoro-82MHexgrad · 0.08B | — | FP16 | 2 Go | +10 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| ChatterboxResemble AI · 0.5B | — | FP16 | 3 Go | +9 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3NVIDIA · 0.6B | — | FP16 | 3 Go | +9 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| TripoSRStability AI · 0.5B | — | FP16 | 3 Go | +9 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Stable Fast 3DStability AI · 1B | — | FP16 | 4 Go | +8 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| TRELLISMicrosoft · 1.2B | — | FP16 | 5 Go | +7 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Whisper large-v3OpenAI · 1.55B | — | FP16 | 5 Go | +7 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Dia 1.6BNari Labs · 1.6B | — | FP16 | 6 Go | +6 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| CogVideoX 5BZhipu AI · 5B | — | Q8_0 | 8 Go | +4 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| GLM-ImageZhipu AI · 9B | — | Q4_K_M | 8 Go | +4 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Mochi 1Genmo · 10B | — | Q4_K_M | 8 Go | +4 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Wan 2.2 5BAlibaba · 5B | — | Q8_0 | 8 Go | +4 Go | comfortable | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Hunyuan3D 2.1Tencent · 3B | — | FP16 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Ming-Image 0.1 DesignAnt Group · 6B | — | Q8_0 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Orpheus 3BCanopy Labs · 3B | — | FP16 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Voxtral Mini 3BMistral AI · 3B | — | FP16 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| YuE2-3Bm-a-p (Multimodal Art Projection) · 3B | — | FP16 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| Z-Image TurboAlibaba · 6B | — | Q8_0 | 9 Go | +3 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| FLUX.2 [klein] 4BBlack Forest Labs · 4B | — | FP16 | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| TRELLIS.2Microsoft · 4B | — | FP16 | 11 Go | +1 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
| HunyuanVideo 1.5Tencent · 8.3B | — | Q8_0 | 12 Go | +0 Go | tight | Hugging Face ↗ |
An “ollama run” command without a suffix pulls the Q4_K_M build from the Ollama library: the row then shows that quantization and its memory, and flags whether FP16 or Q8_0 would also fit. Exception: a model published in a native format (MXFP4 for gpt-oss, FP8 for DeepSeek V4.1) exists in one build only, which is what the command loads. via Hugging Face or an explicit Ollama tag.
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