Llama 3.1 70B needs ~51.9 GB VRAM. Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB has 46.1 GB. With NVFP4 quantization, expect ~11 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
9.3 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Too heavy
Decode
9.0 tok/s
TTFT
21562 ms
Safe context
4K
Memory
55.4 GB / 46.1 GB
Offload
20%
It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.
CPU or host-memory offload is active
About 10% of the working set spills out of accelerator memory, which usually hurts latency and sustained decode throughput.
Very little memory headroom
You can run the model, but there is not much room left for longer context, bigger batches, extra apps, or future model updates.
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.
Remove offload with more accelerator memory
Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.
Buy headroom, not only minimum fit
A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.
Increase host RAM if you keep offloading
This setup may need roughly 4.4 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | B | Very compromised (needs ~5.5 GB host RAM) | 9.5 tok/s | 11104 ms | 4K |
| Coding | F | Too heavy | 8.3 tok/s | 23448 ms | 4K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 8.1 tok/s | 34763 ms | 4K |
| Reasoning | F | Too heavy | 9.0 tok/s | 25482 ms | 4K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 8.1 tok/s | 43454 ms | 4K |
How Llama 3.1 70B (70B params) fits at each quantization level on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB (46.1 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 27.3 GB | Low | A79 |
Q3_K_SBest for your GPU | 3 | 34.3 GB | Low | A79 |
Copy-paste commands to run Llama 3.1 70B on your machine.
Run
ollama run llama3.1Upgrade options
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$2,499 MSRP
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$2,499 MSRP
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$3,999 MSRP
NVIDIA H100 80GBBiggest leapMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$40,000 MSRP
Yes, Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB can run Llama 3.1 70B at NVFP4 quantization (Very compromised (needs ~4.4 GB host RAM)). The recommended Q4_K_M requires 55.4 GB which exceeds available memory, but at NVFP4 it needs only 51.9 GB. Expected decode speed: 11.2 tok/s.
Llama 3.1 70B (70B parameters) requires approximately 55.4 GB at Q4_K_M quantization. On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB, it fits at NVFP4 using 51.9 GB.
The recommended quantization is Q4_K_M, but on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB the best fitting quantization is NVFP4, which uses 51.9 GB.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB, Llama 3.1 70B achieves approximately 11.2 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 17332ms using NVFP4 quantization.
For coding workloads, Llama 3.1 70B on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB receives a F grade with 8.3 tok/s and 4K context.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB, Llama 3.1 70B can safely use up to 4K tokens of context at NVFP4 quantization. The model's official context limit is 128K, 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/llama-3.1-70b-on-m2-ultra-64gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
| 4 |
39.2 GB |
| Medium |
| F0 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 42.7 GB | Medium | F0 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 50.4 GB | High | F0 |
Q6_K | 6 | 57.4 GB | High | F0 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 74.9 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 143.5 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Remove offload with more accelerator memory. Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.
Not always. Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB 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.