Can Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB run Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct?

Apple · 96 GB LPDDR5 · 819 GB/s bandwidth · Meta · 8.0B · model ctx up to 128K

Yes — the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB (96 GB LPDDR5) can run Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct. At Q4 with the default 8K context it needs ≈ 7.0 GB VRAM (weights 4.4 GB + KV cache 1.6 GB + 1 GB runtime overhead), which fits within 96 GB. Decode at Q4/8K: ≈ 65.1 tok/s (estimated, batch 1). FP16 (≈ 18.6 GB) also fits, at ≈ 17.9 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	6.2 GB	Yes	65.1 est.
Q4	8K default	7.0 GB	Yes	65.1 est.
Q4	32K	11.8 GB	Yes	65.1 est.
FP16	4K	17.8 GB	Yes	17.9 est.
FP16	8K default	18.6 GB	Yes	17.9 est.
FP16	32K	23.4 GB	Yes	17.9 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	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB VRAM
Q4	4.4 GB	1.6 GB	1 GB	7.0 GB	96 GB
FP16	16.0 GB	1.6 GB	1 GB	18.6 GB	96 GB

Other GPUs that run Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct

• B200 192GB SXM — ≈636.4 tok/s Q4 est.
• MI300X 192GB — ≈421.6 tok/s Q4 est.
• H200 141GB SXM5 — ≈381.8 tok/s Q4 est.
• H100 80GB SXM5 — ≈266.5 tok/s Q4 est.
• Gaudi 3 128GB — ≈260.6 tok/s Q4 est.
• RTX 5090 32GB — ≈214.3 tok/s Q4 measured
• A100 80GB SXM4 — ≈162.2 tok/s Q4 est.
• RTX 6000 Ada 48GB — ≈138.6 tok/s Q4 measured

All GPUs for Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct →

Other models for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB

• Qwen3-0.6B — ≈651.5 tok/s Q4 est.
• gemma-3-1b-it — ≈521.2 tok/s Q4 est.
• Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct — ≈434.3 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-1.7B — ≈260.6 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-30B-A3B — ≈173.7 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct — ≈173.7 tok/s Q4 est.
• GLM-4.7-Flash — ≈173.7 tok/s Q4 est.
• Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 — ≈173.7 tok/s Q4 est.

All models on the Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB →