Mistral 7B on Apple M3 Max · 36GB

✅ Runs comfortably — Mistral 7B @ Q8_0
Mistral 7B 7B at Q8_0 needs ~8.7 GB (weights 7.2 GB + KV 1.0 GB + overhead 512 MB @ 8K ctx) of your 21.1 GB usable (of 36.0 GB unified memory) — plenty of headroom. Expect ~20–35 tok/s (fast).
context @ Q8_0: comfortable to 32K
quantneedsspeed
✓ Q8_08.7 GB~20–35 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q6_K7.0 GB~25–45 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q5_K_M6.3 GB~30–50 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q4_K_M5.6 GB~35–60 tok/s (fast)
$runlocal install mistral:7b
runlocal verdict card
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Mistral 7B: Runs comfortably
for your own README — links back here

Same model, other machines: Apple M1 · Apple M1 Pro · Apple M2 · Apple M3 Pro · Apple M2 Pro · Apple M4 Pro

Also runs on a Apple M3 Max: Qwen3 · DeepSeek-R1 (distill) · Qwen2.5 · Gemma 4 · Gemma 3

Best models for a Apple M3 Max · 36GB →

Architecturally similar

These share Mistral 7B's KV-cache geometry — they size memory the same way, so here's how they fit on a Apple M3 Max · 36GB too:

modelsharesverdict here
Llama 3.1 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Qwen2.5-Coder 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Llama 3.2 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Llama 3.3 8kv/128hd 🐢 CPU-only (slow)
Mistral Small 3 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Mistral Nemo 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Codestral 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Llama 3.2 Vision 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably

…and 8 more — see the Mistral 7B page.

Check any combo yourself: open the checker →