Yi 34B Chat needs ~29.2 GB VRAM. MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB has 25.9 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~21 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
3.3 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Very compromised (needs ~2.3 GB host RAM)
Decode
20.7 tok/s
TTFT
9344 ms
Safe context
4K
Memory
29.2 GB / 25.9 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 2.3 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | C | Runs with offload (needs ~1.1 GB host RAM) | 22.7 tok/s | 4653 ms | 4K |
| Coding | C | Very compromised (needs ~2.3 GB host RAM) | 20.7 tok/s | 9344 ms | 4K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 17.8 tok/s | 15777 ms | 4K |
| Reasoning | C | Very compromised (needs ~2.3 GB host RAM) | 20.7 tok/s | 11043 ms | 4K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 17.8 tok/s | 19722 ms |
How Yi 34B Chat (34B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB (25.9 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 13.3 GB | Low | C51 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 16.7 GB | Low | C51 |
NVFP4Best for your GPU |
Copy-paste commands to run Yi 34B Chat on your machine.
Run
lms load Yi-34B-Chat && lms server startUpgrade 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.
~$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.
~$1,599 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.
~$2,499 MSRP
Yes, MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB can run Yi 34B Chat with a C grade (Very compromised (needs ~2.3 GB host RAM)). Expected decode speed: 20.7 tok/s.
Yi 34B Chat (34B parameters) requires approximately 29.2 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Yi 34B Chat is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB, Yi 34B Chat achieves approximately 20.7 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 9344ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Yi 34B Chat on MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB receives a C grade with 20.7 tok/s and 4K context.
On MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB, Yi 34B Chat can safely use up to 4K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 200K, 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/yi-34b-chat-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:
| 4K |
| 4 |
19.0 GB |
| Medium |
| C51 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 20.7 GB | Medium | F0 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 24.5 GB | High | F0 |
Q6_K | 6 | 27.9 GB | High | F0 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 36.4 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 69.7 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 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.