Nous Dolphin 13B needs ~26.7 GB VRAM. MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB has 25.9 GB. With Q5_K_M quantization, expect ~27 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
0.8 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Runs with offload (needs ~0.3 GB host RAM)
Decode
26.6 tok/s
TTFT
7290 ms
Safe context
15K
Memory
26.7 GB / 25.9 GB
This setup is broadly balanced for this model.
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.
Buy headroom, not only minimum fit
A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | A | Runs well | 28.1 tok/s | 3752 ms | 15K |
| Coding | A | Runs with offload | 26.6 tok/s | 7290 ms | 15K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 16.5 tok/s | 17099 ms | 15K |
| Reasoning | A | Runs with offload (needs ~0.3 GB host RAM) | 26.6 tok/s | 8616 ms | 15K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 16.5 tok/s | 21374 ms | 15K |
How Nous Dolphin 13B (13B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB (25.9 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 5.1 GB | Low | B66 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 6.4 GB | Low | B66 |
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 | 39.1 tok/s | |
| Qwen 3.5 27B | 27B | S | 28.8 tok/s |
Yes, MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB can run Nous Dolphin 13B with a A grade (Runs with offload). Expected decode speed: 26.6 tok/s.
Nous Dolphin 13B (13B parameters) requires approximately 26.7 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 MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB, Nous Dolphin 13B achieves approximately 26.6 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 7290ms using Q5_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Nous Dolphin 13B on MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB receives a A grade with 26.6 tok/s and 15K context.
On MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB, Nous Dolphin 13B can safely use up to 15K 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-m4-max-36gb" 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 | B67 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 9.4 GB | High | B68 |
Q6_K | 6 | 10.7 GB | High | B69 |
Q8_0Best for your GPU | 8 | 13.9 GB | Very High | A71 |
F16 | 16 | 26.7 GB | Maximum | F0 |
| Qwen 3.6 27B | 27B | S | 28.9 tok/s |
| Qwen 3.6 35B A3B | 35B | A | 28.1 tok/s |
| Qwen3-VL 30B A3B Instruct | 30B | S | 40.4 tok/s |
Buy headroom, not only minimum fit. A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.
Not always. MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB 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.