Nous Dolphin 13B needs ~29.7 GB VRAM. Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB has 46.1 GB. With Q5_K_M quantization, expect ~51 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
50.6 tok/s
TTFT
3829 ms
Safe context
16K
Memory
29.7 GB / 46.1 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 | A | Runs well | 50.6 tok/s | 2088 ms | 16K |
| Coding | A | Runs well | 50.6 tok/s | 3829 ms | 16K |
| Agentic Coding | A | Tight fit | 50.6 tok/s | 5569 ms | 16K |
| Reasoning | A | Runs well | 50.6 tok/s | 4525 ms | 16K |
| RAG | A | Tight fit | 50.6 tok/s | 6961 ms | 16K |
How Nous Dolphin 13B (13B params) fits at each quantization level on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB (46.1 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 5.1 GB | Low | B63 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 6.4 GB | Low | B63 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run Nous Dolphin 13B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "nousresearch/Nous-Dolphin-13B" \
--hf-file "Nous-Dolphin-13B-Q5_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Your hardware
| Model | Params | Grade | Decode | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B Instruct | 30.5B | S | 70.2 tok/s | |
| Qwen 3.5 27B | 27B | S | 30.4 tok/s |
Yes, Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB can run Nous Dolphin 13B with a A grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 50.6 tok/s.
Nous Dolphin 13B (13B parameters) requires approximately 29.7 GB of memory with Q5_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Nous Dolphin 13B is Q5_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB, Nous Dolphin 13B achieves approximately 50.6 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 3829ms using Q5_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Nous Dolphin 13B on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB receives a A grade with 50.6 tok/s and 16K context.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 64GB, Nous Dolphin 13B can safely use up to 16K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 16K, 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/nous-dolphin-13b-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:
7.3 GB |
| Medium |
| B63 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 7.9 GB | Medium | B63 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 9.4 GB | High | B64 |
Q6_K | 6 | 10.7 GB | High | B64 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 13.9 GB | Very High | B65 |
F16Best for your GPU | 16 | 26.7 GB | Maximum | B69 |
| Qwen 3.6 27B | 27B | S | 30.5 tok/s |
| Qwen 3.6 35B A3B | 35B | S | 59 tok/s |
| Qwen3-VL 30B A3B Instruct | 30B | S | 72.6 tok/s |
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.