StableLM 2 12B needs ~20.4 GB VRAM. MacBook Air M4 24GB has 17.3 GB. With Q2_K quantization, expect ~10 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
7.0 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Too heavy
Decode
5.2 tok/s
TTFT
37521 ms
Safe context
4K
Memory
24.3 GB / 17.3 GB
Offload
30%
It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.
CPU or host-memory offload is active
About 20% 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 0.7 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | D | Runs with offload (needs ~0.5 GB host RAM) | 7.4 tok/s | 14206 ms | 4K |
| Coding | F | Too heavy | 5.9 tok/s | 33019 ms | 4K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 3.7 tok/s | 76226 ms | 4K |
| Reasoning | F | Too heavy | 5.2 tok/s | 44343 ms | 4K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 3.7 tok/s | 95282 ms | 4K |
How StableLM 2 12B (12B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Air M4 24GB (17.3 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 4.7 GB | Low | C48 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 5.9 GB | Low | C49 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run StableLM 2 12B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "stabilityai/stablelm-2-12b-chat" \
--hf-file "stablelm-2-12b-chat-Q5_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Upgrade options
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Raises estimated decode speed by about 37%.
~$799 MSRP
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$1,099 MSRP
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Raises estimated decode speed by about 37%.
~$1,099 MSRP
RTX 5090 32GBBiggest leapMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$1,999 MSRP
Yes, MacBook Air M4 24GB can run StableLM 2 12B at Q2_K quantization (Very compromised (needs ~0.7 GB host RAM)). The recommended Q5_K_M requires 24.3 GB which exceeds available memory, but at Q2_K it needs only 20.4 GB. Expected decode speed: 9.8 tok/s.
StableLM 2 12B (12B parameters) requires approximately 24.3 GB at Q5_K_M quantization. On MacBook Air M4 24GB, it fits at Q2_K using 20.4 GB.
The recommended quantization is Q5_K_M, but on MacBook Air M4 24GB the best fitting quantization is Q2_K, which uses 20.4 GB.
On MacBook Air M4 24GB, StableLM 2 12B achieves approximately 9.8 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 19693ms using Q2_K quantization.
For coding workloads, StableLM 2 12B on MacBook Air M4 24GB receives a F grade with 5.9 tok/s and 4K context.
On MacBook Air M4 24GB, StableLM 2 12B can safely use up to 4K tokens of context at Q2_K quantization. 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/stablelm-2-12b-on-m4-air-24gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
6.7 GB |
| Medium |
| C49 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 7.3 GB | Medium | C50 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 8.6 GB | High | C51 |
Q6_K | 6 | 9.8 GB | High | C51 |
Q8_0Best for your GPU | 8 | 12.8 GB | Very High | C50 |
F16 | 16 | 24.6 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 Air M4 24GB 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.