Can the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max run Qwen3.5 9B?
Yes. Qwen3.5 9B fits the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 48 GB at Q4_K_M (about 7.8 GB needed), running at an estimated 52 tok/s. There's room for up to FP16 if you want higher quality.
Every quantization
Qwen3.5 9B (9.7B) on 48 GB
| Quant | Weights | Needs | Fit | Est. speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 6 GB | 7.8 GB | Fits easily | ~52 tok/s |
| Q5_K_M | 7 GB | 8.8 GB | Fits easily | ~45 tok/s |
| Q8_0 | 10 GB | 11.8 GB | Fits easily | ~31 tok/s |
| FP16 | 19 GB | 20.8 GB | Fits easily | ~16 tok/s |
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/Qwen3.5-9B-GGUF -ngl 99Ollama pulls a Q4 build by default. Pick a larger quant only if the table above says it fits. Full Qwen3.5 9B details →
Compare
Same model, other hardware - and other models on this card
Qwen3.5 9B on other hardware
- RTX 5090~171 tok/s
- RTX 5090 D~171 tok/s
- RTX 6000D~150 tok/s
- RTX 4090~104 tok/s
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX~92 tok/s
- RTX 5080~92 tok/s
- RTX 3090~91 tok/s
- RTX 3080 Ti~87 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 Qwen3.5 9B?
Yes. Qwen3.5 9B fits the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max's 48 GB at Q4_K_M (about 7.8 GB needed), running at an estimated 52 tok/s. There's room for up to FP16 if you want higher quality.
How much VRAM does Qwen3.5 9B need?
About 6 GB of weights at Q4_K_M, 10 GB at Q8_0 and 19 GB at FP16. Add roughly 1.8 GB for the KV cache and runtime at modest context lengths.
How fast is Qwen3.5 9B on the MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max?
Roughly 52 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.