Raises estimated decode speed by about 224%.
〜$9,999 MSRP
Falcon 40B Instruct needs ~45.7 GB VRAM. Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB has 92.2 GB. With Q5_K_M quantization, expect ~18 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
17.9 tok/s
TTFT
10833 ms
Safe context
8K
Memory
45.7 GB / 92.2 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 | B | Runs well | 17.9 tok/s | 5909 ms | 8K |
| Coding | B | Runs well | 17.9 tok/s | 10833 ms | 8K |
| Agentic Coding | B | Runs well | 17.9 tok/s | 15757 ms | 8K |
| Reasoning | B | Runs well | 17.9 tok/s | 12803 ms | 8K |
| RAG | B | Runs well | 17.9 tok/s | 19696 ms | 8K |
Inference speed
Estimated decode speed (tokens/sec) for Falcon 40B Instruct at Q5_K_M across popular GPUs and Apple Silicon, including multi-GPU rigs, using the fastest local runtime per device. Fastest is 2× RX 7900 XTX 24GB at ~45 tok/s. Speed is memory-bandwidth bound, so cards that fit the whole model in VRAM run far faster than ones that offload to system RAM.
| GPU / Mac | Memory | Quant | Speed (tok/s) | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2× RX 7900 XTX 24GB | 48 GB | Q5_K_M | 45.3 | Fits |
| 48 GB | Q5_K_M | 41.3 | Fits | |
| 48 GB | Q5_K_M | 35.3 | Fits | |
| 48 GB | Q5_K_M | 31.1 | Fits | |
| 32 GB | Q5_K_M | 29.4 | Heavy offload | |
MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB | 128 GB | Q5_K_M | 23.1 | Fits |
MacBook Pro M4 Max 64GB | 64 GB | Q5_K_M | 23.1 | Tight |
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB | 256 GB | Q5_K_M | 21.5 | Fits |
Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB | 128 GB | Q5_K_M | 17.9 | Fits |
Mac Studio M1 Ultra 128GB | 128 GB | Q5_K_M | 16.9 | Fits |
MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB | 48 GB | Q5_K_M | 12.9 | Offloads |
| 24 GB | Q5_K_M | 10.5 | Too big | |
RX 7900 XTX 24GB | 24 GB | Q5_K_M | 9.5 | Too big |
MacBook Pro M3 Max 64GB | 64 GB | Q5_K_M | 9.2 | Tight |
| 24 GB | Q5_K_M | 9.0 | Too big | |
MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB | 64 GB | Q5_K_M | 8.5 | Tight |
| 16 GB | Q5_K_M | 3.7 | Too big | |
| 12 GB | Q5_K_M | 2.2 | Too big | |
| 12 GB | Q5_K_M | 2.0 | Too big | |
| 8 GB | Q5_K_M | 2.0 | Too big |
Estimates for single-stream decoding at Q5_K_M; real tokens/sec varies with prompt length, context, batch size, and runtime build. Prompt processing (prefill) is faster than the decode figures shown here.
How Falcon 40B Instruct (40B params) fits at each quantization level on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB (92.2 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 15.6 GB | Low | B61 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 19.6 GB | Low | B62 |
NVFP4 | 4 | 22.4 GB | Medium | B62 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 24.4 GB | Medium | B62 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 28.8 GB | High | B63 |
Q6_K | 6 | 32.8 GB | High | B64 |
Q8_0Best for your GPU | 8 | 42.8 GB | Very High | B66 |
F16 | 16 | 82.0 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Copy-paste commands to run Falcon 40B Instruct on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "tiiuae/falcon-40b-instruct" \
--hf-file "falcon-40b-instruct-Q5_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99アップグレードオプション
Raises estimated decode speed by about 224%.
〜$9,999 MSRP
Raises estimated decode speed by about 189%.
〜$9,999 MSRP
Yes, Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB can run Falcon 40B Instruct with a B grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 17.9 tok/s.
Falcon 40B Instruct (40B parameters) requires approximately 45.7 GB of memory with Q5_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Falcon 40B Instruct is Q5_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB, Falcon 40B Instruct achieves approximately 17.9 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 10833ms using Q5_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Falcon 40B Instruct on Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB receives a B grade with 17.9 tok/s and 8K context.
On Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB, Falcon 40B Instruct can safely use up to 8K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 8K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Not always. Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB 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.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/falcon-40b-instruct-on-m2-ultra-128gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
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