Mistral Small 3.2 24B needs ~23.5 GB VRAM. MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB has 34.6 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~37 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
36.8 tok/s
TTFT
5268 ms
Safe context
89K
Memory
23.5 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 | S | Runs well | 36.8 tok/s | 2873 ms | 89K |
| Coding | S | Runs well | 36.8 tok/s | 5268 ms | 89K |
| Agentic Coding | S | Runs well | 36.8 tok/s | 7662 ms | 89K |
| Reasoning | S | Runs well | 36.8 tok/s | 6226 ms | 89K |
| RAG | S | Runs well | 36.8 tok/s | 9578 ms | 89K |
How Mistral Small 3.2 24B (24B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB (34.6 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 9.4 GB | Low | A79 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 11.8 GB | Low | A80 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run Mistral Small 3.2 24B on your machine.
Run
ollama run mistral-small3.2Your 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 Mistral Small 3.2 24B with a S grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 36.8 tok/s.
Mistral Small 3.2 24B (24B parameters) requires approximately 23.5 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Mistral Small 3.2 24B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB, Mistral Small 3.2 24B achieves approximately 36.8 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 5268ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Mistral Small 3.2 24B on MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB receives a S grade with 36.8 tok/s and 89K context.
On MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB, Mistral Small 3.2 24B can safely use up to 89K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 131K, 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/mistral-small-3.2-24b-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:
13.4 GB |
| Medium |
| A81 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 14.6 GB | Medium | A81 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 17.3 GB | High | A83 |
Q6_K | 6 | 19.7 GB | High | A83 |
Q8_0Best for your GPU | 8 | 25.7 GB | Very High | A82 |
F16 | 16 | 49.2 GB | Maximum | F0 |
| Qwen 3.6 27B | 27B | S | 36.2 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.