Can MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB run Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct?

Apple · 128 GB LPDDR5 · 400 GB/s bandwidth · Alibaba · 72.7B · model ctx up to 128K

Yes — the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB (128 GB LPDDR5) can run Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct. At Q4 with the default 8K context it needs ≈ 55.53 GB VRAM (weights 39.99 GB + KV cache 14.54 GB + 1 GB runtime overhead), which fits within 128 GB. Decode at Q4/8K: ≈ 3.5 tok/s (estimated, batch 1). FP16 needs ≈ 160.94 GB — does not fit on this card. Estimates come from memory-bandwidth math; rows tagged measured override estimates. Relative ranking is more reliable than absolute tok/s. Methodology.

Fit & speed by quant and context

Quant	Context	VRAM needed	Fits?	tok/s (decode)
Q4	4K	48.26 GB	Yes	3.5 est.
Q4	8K default	55.53 GB	Yes	3.5 est.
Q4	32K	99.15 GB	Yes	3.5 est.
FP16	4K	153.67 GB	No	1.9 est.
FP16	8K default	160.94 GB	No	1.7 est.
FP16	32K	204.56 GB	No	1.1 est.

Fits = weights + KV(ctx) + 1 GB overhead ≤ 95% of VRAM. Measured anchors are context-agnostic; the fit verdict is recomputed per context. A missing tok/s means the model is far beyond this card (offload-only territory).

VRAM breakdown at 8K context

Quant	Weights	KV cache	Overhead	Total needed	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB VRAM
Q4	39.99 GB	14.54 GB	1 GB	55.53 GB	128 GB
FP16	145.4 GB	14.54 GB	1 GB	160.94 GB	128 GB

Other GPUs that run Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct

• B200 192GB SXM — ≈70.0 tok/s Q4 est.
• MI300X 192GB — ≈46.4 tok/s Q4 est.
• H200 141GB SXM5 — ≈42.0 tok/s Q4 est.
• H100 80GB SXM5 — ≈29.3 tok/s Q4 est.
• Gaudi 3 128GB — ≈28.7 tok/s Q4 est.
• A100 80GB SXM4 — ≈16.47 tok/s Q4 measured
• MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB — ≈11.0 tok/s Q4 measured
• Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB — ≈7.2 tok/s Q4 est.

All GPUs for Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct →

Other models for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB

• Qwen3-0.6B — ≈318.2 tok/s Q4 est.
• gemma-3-1b-it — ≈254.5 tok/s Q4 est.
• Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct — ≈212.1 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-1.7B — ≈127.3 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-30B-A3B — ≈84.8 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct — ≈84.8 tok/s Q4 est.
• GLM-4.7-Flash — ≈84.8 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 — ≈84.8 tok/s Q4 est.

All models on the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB →