Can Ministral 3 14B run on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB?

YES — Runs Great

A83Great

Estimated from fit model

Ministral 3 14B needs ~23.1 GB VRAM. Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB has 69.1 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~70 tok/s.

Runtime: TransformersCapacity: RoomyBandwidth: HighStack: StandardBottleneck: Balanced

Operating mode

Choose the run profile you care about

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.

Capabilities:

Select quantization to explore

Q4_K_M (Medium quality) — 23.1 GB, 70.1 tok/s, Runs well

23.1 GB required69.1 GB available

33% VRAM used

Fit status

Runs well

Decode

70.1 tok/s

TTFT

2762 ms

Safe context

262K

Memory

23.1 GB / 69.1 GB

Memory breakdown

Weights8.5 GB

KV Cache2.4 GB

Runtime1.8 GB

Headroom10.4 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsMinistral 3 14B on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB
1st promptCold start — includes initialization
>What is local AI inference?
Local AI inference means running an AI language model directly on your own hardware — your laptop, desktop, or server — instead of sending requests to a remote cloud API.

When you run inference locally the model weights are loaded into your GPU or unified memory. Each token you generate requires reading those weights from memory, so memory bandwidth is the main bottleneck for decode speed.

Key benefits of running locally:
  - Full privacy: your prompts never leave your machine
  - No per-token cost or rate limits
  - Works offline once the model is downloaded
  - Latency depends only on your hardware
2nd promptWarm — model ready, no init overhead
>How much VRAM do I need?
It depends on the model size and quantization level. A rough rule of thumb:

  Model size     Q4 (4-bit)    Q8 (8-bit)    FP16
  7B params      ~4.3 GB       ~7.5 GB       ~14 GB
  13B params     ~7.9 GB       ~13.9 GB      ~26 GB
  70B params     ~42.7 GB      ~74.9 GB      ~140 GB

Most people use 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M) which gives 90-95% of full quality at a fraction of the memory. A 24 GB GPU can comfortably run most 7B-13B models.
Estimated: 70.1 tok/s decode · 2.8s TTFT (warm) · 175 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

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.

Best improvement path

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	A	Runs well	70.1 tok/s	1506 ms	262K
Coding	A	Runs well	70.1 tok/s	2762 ms	262K
Agentic Coding	A	Runs well	70.1 tok/s	4017 ms	262K
Reasoning	A	Runs well	70.1 tok/s	3264 ms	262K
RAG	A	Runs well	70.1 tok/s	5021 ms	262K

Inference speed

Ministral 3 14B inference speed — tokens per second by GPU & Mac

Estimated decode speed (tokens/sec) for Ministral 3 14B at Q4_K_M across popular GPUs and Apple Silicon, using the fastest local runtime per device. Fastest is RTX 5090 32GB at ~121 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?
RTX 5090 32GB	32 GB	Q4_K_M	120.9	Fits
RX 7900 XTX 24GB	24 GB	Q4_K_M	87.0	Fits
RTX 4090 24GB	24 GB	Q4_K_M	77.1	Fits
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB	256 GB	Q4_K_M	70.1	Fits
RTX 3090 24GB	24 GB	Q4_K_M	66.0	Fits
RTX 4080 Super 16GB	16 GB	Q4_K_M	61.5	Tight
Mac Studio M2 Ultra 128GB	128 GB	Q4_K_M	58.4	Fits
Mac Studio M1 Ultra 128GB	128 GB	Q4_K_M	55.4	Fits
MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB	128 GB	Q4_K_M	38.1	Fits
MacBook Pro M4 Max 64GB	64 GB	Q4_K_M	38.1	Fits
MacBook Pro M3 Max 64GB	64 GB	Q4_K_M	30.2	Fits
MacBook Pro M1 Max 64GB	64 GB	Q4_K_M	27.7	Fits
RTX 4070 12GB	12 GB	Q4_K_M	25.9	Heavy offload
MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB	48 GB	Q4_K_M	23.3	Fits
RTX 3060 12GB	12 GB	Q4_K_M	16.3	Heavy offload
RTX 4060 8GB	8 GB	Q4_K_M	4.5	Too big

Estimates for single-stream decoding at Q4_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.

Quantization options

How Ministral 3 14B (14B params) fits at each quantization level on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB (69.1 GB usable).

Quant	Bits	VRAM	Quality	Fit
Q2_K	2	5.5 GB	Low	A75
Q3_K_S	3	6.9 GB	Low	A75
NVFP4	4	7.8 GB	Medium	A76
Q4_K_M	4	8.5 GB	Medium	A76
Q5_K_M	5	10.1 GB	High	A76
Q6_K	6	11.5 GB	High	A76
Q8_0	8	15.0 GB	Very High	A77
F16Best for your GPU	16	28.7 GB	Maximum	A80

Get started

Copy-paste commands to run Ministral 3 14B on your machine.

Run

docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
  --hf-repo "mistralai/Ministral-3-14B-Instruct-2512" \
  --hf-file "Ministral-3-14B-Instruct-2512-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
  -c 4096 -ngl 99

Your hardware

More models your Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB can run

Model	Params	Grade	Decode
Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B Instruct	30.5B	S	84.2 tok/s
Qwen 3.5 27B	27B	S	36.5 tok/s
Qwen 3.6 27B	27B	S	36.6 tok/s
Qwen 3.6 35B A3B	35B	S	70.8 tok/s
Qwen3-VL 30B A3B Instruct	30B	S	87.1 tok/s

Frequently asked questions

Can Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB run Ministral 3 14B?

Yes, Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB can run Ministral 3 14B with a A grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 70.1 tok/s.

How much VRAM does Ministral 3 14B need?

Ministral 3 14B (14B parameters) requires approximately 23.1 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.

What is the best quantization for Ministral 3 14B?

The recommended quantization for Ministral 3 14B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.

What speed will Ministral 3 14B run at on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB?

On Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB, Ministral 3 14B achieves approximately 70.1 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 2762ms using Q4_K_M quantization.

Can Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB run Ministral 3 14B for coding?

For coding workloads, Ministral 3 14B on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB receives a A grade with 70.1 tok/s and 262K context.

What context window can Ministral 3 14B use on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB?

On Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB, Ministral 3 14B can safely use up to 262K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 262K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.

Is unified memory on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB as fast as VRAM for Ministral 3 14B?

Not always. Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB 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.

See all results for Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB See all hardware for Ministral 3 14B

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