OLMo 2 13B needs ~13.0 GB VRAM. MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB has 11.5 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~15 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
1.5 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Very compromised (needs ~0.9 GB host RAM)
Decode
14.6 tok/s
TTFT
13267 ms
Safe context
6K
Memory
13.0 GB / 11.5 GB
Offload
10%
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 0.9 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | A | Runs with offload (needs ~0.2 GB host RAM) | 16.9 tok/s | 6259 ms | 6K |
| Coding | B | Very compromised (needs ~0.9 GB host RAM) | 14.6 tok/s | 13267 ms | 6K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 11.8 tok/s | 23882 ms | 6K |
| Reasoning | B | Very compromised (needs ~0.9 GB host RAM) | 14.6 tok/s | 15679 ms | 6K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 11.8 tok/s | 29853 ms |
How OLMo 2 13B (13B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB (11.5 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 5.1 GB | Low | A80 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 6.4 GB | Low | A79 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run OLMo 2 13B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "allenai/OLMo-2-13B-Instruct" \
--hf-file "OLMo-2-13B-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Upgrade options
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Adds memory headroom for longer context windows and future model growth.
~$799 MSRP
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Adds memory headroom for longer context windows and future model growth.
~$1,099 MSRP
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Adds memory headroom for longer context windows and future model growth.
~$1,099 MSRP
RTX 5080 Laptop 16GBBiggest leapRemoves host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Raises estimated decode speed by about 502%.
Yes, MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB can run OLMo 2 13B with a B grade (Very compromised (needs ~0.9 GB host RAM)). Expected decode speed: 14.6 tok/s.
OLMo 2 13B (13B parameters) requires approximately 13.0 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for OLMo 2 13B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB, OLMo 2 13B achieves approximately 14.6 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 13267ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, OLMo 2 13B on MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB receives a B grade with 14.6 tok/s and 6K context.
On MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB, OLMo 2 13B can safely use up to 6K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 33K, 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/olmo-2-13b-on-m1-pro-16gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
| 6K |
7.3 GB |
| Medium |
| A79 |
Q4_K_MBest for your GPU | 4 | 7.9 GB | Medium | A79 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 9.4 GB | High | F0 |
Q6_K | 6 | 10.7 GB | High | F0 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 13.9 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 26.7 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. MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB 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.