What can a Mac with 96 GB run locally?

Only on an experimental path, in RigCheck's quick setup: IQ3_S; No measured speed for this hardware and setup yet; Measured on one Mac (M5 Max 128 GB). A chip with less memory bandwidth is slower, and less memory leaves less room. Apple Silicon (M1 or newer, macOS 15 or newer) runs Strata's Metal engine, ready-made in the Mac app (.dmg). Strata calls its Mac status new: measured on three Macs, other chips untested; RigCheck counts it as experimental. The full checker takes your exact setup (RAM, disk, operating system, processor) and gives the install steps.

Yes, by RigCheck's capacity estimate, in RigCheck's quick setup: BF16 · unified memory; No measured speed for this hardware and setup yet; On a Mac, raise the GPU wired-memory limit first; the full checker gives the command; RigCheck capacity estimate, not a measured setup. The full checker takes your exact setup (context length, RAM, image input) and gives the command to start it.

Yes, by RigCheck's capacity estimate, in RigCheck's quick setup: Gemma 4 31B: fits (capacity estimate) (BF16, unified memory); Gemma 4 26B-A4B: fits (capacity estimate) (BF16, unified memory); Gemma 4 12B: fits (capacity estimate) (BF16, unified memory); Gemma 4 E4B: fits (capacity estimate) (BF16, unified memory); Gemma 4 E2B: fits (capacity estimate) (BF16, unified memory); No measured speed for this hardware and setup yet; On a Mac, raise the GPU wired-memory limit first; the full checker gives the command; RigCheck capacity estimate, not a measured setup. The full checker takes your exact setup (context length, RAM, image input) and gives the command to start it.

Only as a planning estimate: the checker's uncalibrated memory budget, offload peak unverified, in RigCheck's quick setup: Mac GGUF is within the planning budget; Metal execution unverified here; Uncalibrated allowances, not a minimum or a guarantee. Full checkpoint files are counted in host RAM even when mmap or sequential loading can use less. Actual peak depends on attention, prefix caches, VAE tiling, reference sizes and backend. No speed prediction. The full checker lets you change the task, resolution, references and offload (batch is fixed at one), and lists the files.

A published route or recipe matches, with caveats, in RigCheck's quick setup: Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B: a published route or recipe matches, with caveats (Matches Unsloth's short-context budget: about 32 GB of RAM or unified memory); Nemotron 3.5 Super VL 120B-A12B: a published route or recipe matches, with caveats (Matches Unsloth's 96 GB budget: UD-Q3_K_XL (65.8 GB) or NVFP4 (79 GB)); On a Mac, raise the GPU wired-memory limit first; the full checker gives the command; Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B: NVIDIA names no Mac setup; Unsloth's llama.cpp guide covers Metal builds. Unsloth budgets around 32 GB of RAM or unified memory for short-context use (48–64 GB for more headroom) with its 22 GB IQ2_XXS GGUF in llama.cpp; longer contexts, images and video need more. This unified memory is 96 GB. That is Unsloth's planning estimate, not a measured run on this hardware. On a Mac, raise the GPU wired-memory limit first. Nemotron 3.5 Super VL 120B-A12B: Unsloth's planning estimate for a modest context, including the OS, runtime, KV cache and vision file; not a measured run. This setup counts 96 GB of unified memory (counted once). Longer contexts and video need more. On a Mac, raise the GPU wired-memory limit first. The full checker lets you change the route or recipe settings and lists the files and the published recipe.