Can the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max run Qwen3.5 35B A3B?
Yes. Qwen3.5 35B A3B fits the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 48 GB at Q4_K_M (about 22.8 GB needed), running at an estimated 119 tok/s. There's room for up to Q8_0 if you want higher quality.
Every quantization
Qwen3.5 35B A3B (36B, 3B active) on 48 GB
| Quant | Weights | Needs | Fit | Est. speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 21 GB | 22.8 GB | Fits easily | ~119 tok/s |
| Q5_K_M | 26 GB | 27.8 GB | Fits easily | ~96 tok/s |
| Q8_0 | 39 GB | 40.8 GB | Fits | ~64 tok/s |
| FP16 | 72 GB | 73.8 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
llama-server -hf unsloth/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-GGUF -ngl 99Ollama pulls a Q4 build by default. Pick a larger quant only if the table above says it fits. Full Qwen3.5 35B A3B details →
Compare
Same model, other hardware - and other models on this card
Qwen3.5 35B A3B on other hardware
- RTX 5090~391 tok/s
- RTX 5090 D~391 tok/s
- RTX 6000D~343 tok/s
- RTX 4090~238 tok/s
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX~210 tok/s
- RTX 3090~209 tok/s
- Arc Pro B60~100 tok/s
- DGX Spark (GB10)~60 tok/s
Also runs on the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max
- Qwen3.6 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
- Qwen3.8 27B~20 tok/s
Frequently asked
Quick answers
Can the Apple MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max run Qwen3.5 35B A3B?
Yes. Qwen3.5 35B A3B fits the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 48 GB at Q4_K_M (about 22.8 GB needed), running at an estimated 119 tok/s. There's room for up to Q8_0 if you want higher quality.
How much VRAM does Qwen3.5 35B A3B need?
About 21 GB of weights at Q4_K_M, 39 GB at Q8_0 and 72 GB at FP16. Add roughly 1.8 GB for the KV cache and runtime at modest context lengths.
How fast is Qwen3.5 35B A3B on the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max?
Roughly 119 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; as a mixture-of-experts model only about 3B parameters are read per token, which is why it is faster than its size suggests.