Run Qwen 3 4B on M5 Max

Yes — Qwen 3 4B (4B) runs at 135 tok/s on M5 Max with 64 GB RAM using Q4_K_M quantization via Ollama. First token latency is 0.2s. Alibaba's 4B dense model with strong multilingual and coding capabilities.

Speed
135
tok/s
First Token
0.2
seconds
RAM Needed
64
GB minimum
Engine
Ollama
recommended

Benchmark Details

LLMCheck measured Qwen 3 4B on M5 Max using the standard methodology: Q4_K_M quantization, 256-token input, 512-token output, 3 runs averaged on a freshly-booted system.

MetricValue
Tokens per second135 tok/s
Time to first token0.2s
QuantizationQ4_K_M
Minimum RAM64 GB
Recommended engineOllama
Parameters4B
Benchmark date2026-03

Q4_K_M 4B Ollama M5 Max

Setup Guide: Run Qwen 3 4B on M5 Max

The recommended engine for Qwen 3 4B on M5 Max is Ollama. Install Ollama, then pull the model:

ollama run qwen3:4b

Ollama handles quantization automatically — it will download the Q4_K_M variant (~64 GB) and start an interactive chat session.

Performance on Other Apple Silicon Chips

ChipSpeedFirst TokenMin RAMEngine
M4 Pro 118 tok/s 0.3s 24 GB MLX
M2 52 tok/s 0.7s 8 GB Ollama

System Requirements

To run Qwen 3 4B on M5 Max you need:

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