Kimi Linear 48B A3B needs ~45.8 GB VRAM. Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB has 92.2 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~16 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
15.8 tok/s
TTFT
12217 ms
Safe context
816K
Memory
45.8 GB / 92.2 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 | A | Runs well | 15.8 tok/s | 6664 ms | 816K |
| Coding | A | Runs well | 15.8 tok/s | 12217 ms | 816K |
| Agentic Coding | A | Runs well | 15.8 tok/s | 17770 ms | 816K |
| Reasoning | A | Runs well | 15.8 tok/s | 14438 ms | 816K |
| RAG | A | Runs well | 15.8 tok/s | 22212 ms | 816K |
Inference speed
Estimated decode speed (tokens/sec) for Kimi Linear 48B A3B at Q4_K_M across popular GPUs and Apple Silicon, including multi-GPU rigs, using the fastest local runtime per device. Fastest is 2× RX 7900 XTX 24GB at ~40 tok/s. Speed is memory-bandwidth bound, so cards that fit the whole model in VRAM run far faster than ones that offload to system RAM.
| GPU / Mac | Memory | Quant | Speed (tok/s) | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2× RX 7900 XTX 24GB | 48 GB | Q4_K_M | 40.1 | Fits |
 2× RTX 4090 24GB | 48 GB | Q4_K_M | 29.3 | Fits |
| RTX 5090 32GB | 32 GB | Q4_K_M | 25.8 | Heavy offload |
| 2× RTX 3090 24GB | 48 GB | Q4_K_M | 25.1 | Fits |
| 4× RTX 3060 12GB | 48 GB | Q4_K_M | 22.1 | Fits |
MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB | 128 GB | Q4_K_M | 21.1 | Fits |
MacBook Pro M4 Max 64GB | 64 GB | Q4_K_M | 21.1 | Tight |
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB | 256 GB | Q4_K_M | 19.0 | Fits |
Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB | 128 GB | Q4_K_M | 15.8 | Fits |
Mac Studio M1 Ultra 128GB | 128 GB | Q4_K_M | 15.0 | Fits |
MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB | 48 GB | Q4_K_M | 10.6 | Offloads |
MacBook Pro M3 Max 64GB | 64 GB | Q4_K_M | 8.2 | Tight |
MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB | 64 GB | Q4_K_M | 7.5 | Tight |
| RTX 4090 24GB | 24 GB | Q4_K_M | 7.1 | Too big |
RX 7900 XTX 24GB | 24 GB | Q4_K_M | 6.4 | Too big |
| RTX 3090 24GB | 24 GB | Q4_K_M | 6.1 | Too big |
| RTX 4080 Super 16GB | 16 GB | Q4_K_M | 2.5 | Too big |
| RTX 4070 12GB | 12 GB | Q4_K_M | 2.0 | Too big |
| RTX 3060 12GB | 12 GB | Q4_K_M | 2.0 | Too big |
| RTX 4060 8GB | 8 GB | Q4_K_M | 2.0 | Too big |
Estimates for single-stream decoding at Q4_K_M; real tokens/sec varies with prompt length, context, batch size, and runtime build. Prompt processing (prefill) is faster than the decode figures shown here.
How Kimi Linear 48B A3B (48B params) fits at each quantization level on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB (92.2 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 18.7 GB | Low | A73 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 23.5 GB | Low | A74 |
NVFP4 | 4 | 26.9 GB | Medium | A74 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 29.3 GB | Medium | A75 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 34.6 GB | High | A76 |
Q6_K | 6 | 39.4 GB | High | A77 |
Q8_0Best for your GPU | 8 | 51.4 GB | Very High | A80 |
F16 | 16 | 98.4 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Copy-paste commands to run Kimi Linear 48B A3B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "moonshotai/Kimi-Linear-48B-A3B-Instruct" \
--hf-file "Kimi-Linear-48B-A3B-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Your hardware
| Model | Params | Grade | Decode | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Devstral 2 123B Instruct | 123B | S | 5.8 tok/s | |
 Qwen 3.5 122B A10B | 122B | S | 16.9 tok/s | |
| Mistral Small 4 119B | 119B | S | 18.1 tok/s | |
 GPT-OSS 120B | 117B | S | 7.1 tok/s | |
 Command A 111B | 111B | S | 7.5 tok/s |
Yes, Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB can run Kimi Linear 48B A3B with a A grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 15.8 tok/s.
Kimi Linear 48B A3B (48B parameters) requires approximately 45.8 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Kimi Linear 48B A3B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB, Kimi Linear 48B A3B achieves approximately 15.8 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 12217ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Kimi Linear 48B A3B on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB receives a A grade with 15.8 tok/s and 816K context.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB, Kimi Linear 48B A3B can safely use up to 816K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 1.0M, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Not always. Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB 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.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/kimi-linear-48b-a3b-on-m2-ultra-128gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
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