Can Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB run gemma-4-26B-A4B-it?
Apple · 96 GB LPDDR5 · 819 GB/s bandwidth ·
Google · 25.2B (active 3.8B) · MoE · model ctx up to 256K
Yes — the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB (96 GB LPDDR5) can run gemma-4-26B-A4B-it. At Q4 with the default 8K context it needs ≈ 15.62 GB VRAM (weights 13.86 GB + KV cache 0.76 GB + 1 GB runtime overhead), which fits within 96 GB. Decode at Q4/8K: ≈ 137.2 tok/s (estimated, batch 1). FP16 (≈ 52.16 GB) also fits, at ≈ 37.7 tok/s (estimated). 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
15.24 GB
Yes
137.2est.
Q4
8K default
15.62 GB
Yes
137.2est.
Q4
32K
17.9 GB
Yes
137.2est.
FP16
4K
51.78 GB
Yes
37.7est.
FP16
8K default
52.16 GB
Yes
37.7est.
FP16
32K
54.44 GB
Yes
37.7est.
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).