LLaVA 1.6 13B needs ~26.2 GB VRAM. MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB has 34.6 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~43 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
38.2 tok/s
TTFT
5072 ms
Safe context
4K
Memory
26.2 GB / 34.6 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 | 38.2 tok/s | 2766 ms | 4K |
| Coding | A | Runs well | 43.4 tok/s | 4463 ms | 4K |
| Agentic Coding | B | Very compromised (needs ~0.8 GB host RAM) | 32.1 tok/s | 8775 ms | 4K |
| Reasoning | A | Runs well | 38.2 tok/s | 5994 ms | 4K |
| RAG | B | Very compromised (needs ~0.8 GB host RAM) | 32.1 tok/s | 10969 ms | 4K |
How LLaVA 1.6 13B (13B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB (34.6 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 5.1 GB | Low | B67 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 6.4 GB | Low | B67 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run LLaVA 1.6 13B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "liuhaotian/llava-v1.6-mistral-7b" \
--hf-file "llava-v1.6-mistral-7b-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Your hardware
| Model | Params | Grade | Decode | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B Instruct | 30.5B | S | 52 tok/s | |
| Qwen 3.5 27B | 27B | S | 36.1 tok/s |
Yes, MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB can run LLaVA 1.6 13B with a A grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 43.4 tok/s.
LLaVA 1.6 13B (13B parameters) requires approximately 26.2 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for LLaVA 1.6 13B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB, LLaVA 1.6 13B achieves approximately 43.4 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 4463ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, LLaVA 1.6 13B on MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB receives a A grade with 43.4 tok/s and 4K context.
On MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB, LLaVA 1.6 13B can safely use up to 4K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 4K, 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/llava-1.6-13b-on-m4-max-48gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
7.3 GB |
| Medium |
| B67 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 7.9 GB | Medium | B68 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 9.4 GB | High | B68 |
Q6_K | 6 | 10.7 GB | High | B69 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 13.9 GB | Very High | A70 |
F16Best for your GPU | 16 | 26.7 GB | Maximum | A72 |
| Qwen 3.6 27B | 27B | S | 27.4 tok/s |
| Qwen 3.6 35B A3B | 35B | S | 43.7 tok/s |
| Qwen3-VL 30B A3B Instruct | 30B | S | 53.8 tok/s |
Not always. MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB 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.