Qwen3.5 9B needs ~17.8 GB VRAM. Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB has 69.1 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~101 tok/s.
Operating mode
Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.
Current mode
Balanced
Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.
Select quantization to explore
Fit status
Runs well
Decode
101.4 tok/s
TTFT
1908 ms
Safe context
794K
Memory
17.8 GB / 69.1 GB
This setup is broadly balanced for this model.
Shared-memory contention still exists
The OS, browser, and inference runtime all compete for the same physical memory pool, so real-world headroom is less forgiving than raw capacity suggests.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | C | Runs well | 101.4 tok/s | 1041 ms | 794K |
| Coding | C | Runs well | 101.4 tok/s | 1908 ms | 794K |
| Agentic Coding | C | Runs well | 101.4 tok/s | 2776 ms | 794K |
| Reasoning | C | Runs well | 101.4 tok/s | 2255 ms | 794K |
| RAG | C | Runs well | 101.4 tok/s | 3470 ms | 794K |
How Qwen3.5 9B (9B params) fits at each quantization level on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB (69.1 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 3.5 GB | Low | C41 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 4.4 GB | Low | C41 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run Qwen3.5 9B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "unsloth/Qwen3.5-9B-GGUF" \
--hf-file "Qwen3.5-9B-GGUF-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Yes, Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB can run Qwen3.5 9B with a C grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 101.4 tok/s.
Qwen3.5 9B (9B parameters) requires approximately 17.8 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Qwen3.5 9B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB, Qwen3.5 9B achieves approximately 101.4 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 1908ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Qwen3.5 9B on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB receives a C grade with 101.4 tok/s and 794K context.
On Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB, Qwen3.5 9B can safely use up to 794K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is —, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/hf-unsloth--qwen3-5-9b-gguf-on-m3-ultra-96gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
5.0 GB |
| Medium |
| C41 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 5.5 GB | Medium | C41 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 6.5 GB | High | C41 |
Q6_K | 6 | 7.4 GB | High | C41 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 9.6 GB | Very High | C41 |
F16Best for your GPU | 16 | 18.5 GB | Maximum | C43 |
Not always. Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB can often fit larger models thanks to unified memory, but a discrete GPU with dedicated high-bandwidth VRAM may still decode faster once the model fits. For this combination, the important distinction is capacity versus sustained throughput.