Can the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max run Qwen2.5 72B?
Just. Qwen2.5 72B at Q4_K_M needs about 41.8 GB of the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 48 GB, running at an estimated 7.8 tok/s. Keep context short and close other GPU apps.
Every quantization
Qwen2.5 72B (72B) on 48 GB
| Quant | Weights | Needs | Fit | Est. speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 40 GB | 41.8 GB | Tight | ~7.8 tok/s |
| Q5_K_M | 48 GB | 49.8 GB | Too big | - |
| Q8_0 | 78 GB | 79.8 GB | Too big | - |
| FP16 | 144 GB | 145.8 GB | Too big | - |
Estimates. Needs = weights + 1.8 GB for KV cache and runtime at modest context. Speed is single-stream decode scaled from the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 546 GB/s bandwidth (Estimated from memory bandwidth (llama.cpp decode)). Long contexts need more memory and run slower.
Run it
Copy, paste, go
ollama run qwen2.5:72bllama-server -hf Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct-GGUF -ngl 99Ollama pulls a Q4 build by default. Pick a larger quant only if the table above says it fits. Full Qwen2.5 72B details →
Compare
Same model, other hardware - and other models on this card
Qwen2.5 72B on other hardware
- RTX 6000D~23 tok/s
- DGX Spark (GB10)~3.9 tok/s
- RTX Spark N1X (128 GB)~3.9 tok/s
Also runs on the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B~119 tok/s
- Qwen3.5 35B A3B~119 tok/s
- dolphin-2.9.1-yi-1.5-34b~16 tok/s
- Gemma 4 31B~16 tok/s
- Qwen3 32B~16 tok/s
- GLM-4.7-Flash~121 tok/s
- Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507~118 tok/s
- Qwen3.6 27B~20 tok/s
Frequently asked
Quick answers
Can the Apple MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max run Qwen2.5 72B?
Just. Qwen2.5 72B at Q4_K_M needs about 41.8 GB of the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 48 GB, running at an estimated 7.8 tok/s. Keep context short and close other GPU apps.
How much VRAM does Qwen2.5 72B need?
About 40 GB of weights at Q4_K_M, 78 GB at Q8_0 and 144 GB at FP16. Add roughly 1.8 GB for the KV cache and runtime at modest context lengths.
How fast is Qwen2.5 72B on the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max?
Roughly 7.8 tokens per second at Q4_K_M (single user, llama.cpp-style decode). This is an estimate from the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 546 GB/s memory bandwidth.