§01·spec · /gpus
Apple M2 Pro
appleapple series16GB unified
17 open-weights AI models run on the Apple M2 Pro — see which fit, how fast they go, and the VRAM each needs.
Apple Silicon uses unified memory shared between CPU and GPU. Of this machine’s 16 GB the GPU addresses 10.7 GiB by default — exactly two thirds — and the limit is raisable via Metal’s wired-memory setting.
§02·models that run on this GPU
17 totalLLM · 9
| Model | Best speed | Min VRAM | Works | Evidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 12B | 16GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| gpt-oss 20B | 13GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Llama 3.1 8B | 5GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Mistral Nemo 12B | 16GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Nanbeige4.2 3B | 16GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Ornith 1.0 9B | 12GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Phi-4 | 16GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Qwen3 14B | 9GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Qwen3-8B | 5GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ |
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 16GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 13GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 5GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 16GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 16GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 12GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 16GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 9GB
- Evidence
- recipe
- Best speed
- Min VRAM
- 5GB
- Evidence
- recipe
Multimodal · 4
| Model | Best speed | Min VRAM | Works | Evidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bonsai 27B | 6GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Fara1.5-4B | 16GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Fara1.5-9B | 16GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ | |
| Gemma 4 E4B-IT | 5GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ |
Image · 1
| Model | Best speed | Min VRAM | Works | Evidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Z-Image Turbo | 6GB | ✓ | recipe | check ↗ |
Video · 1
§03·tested recipes
showing 6 of 17- llmintermediate16GB+recipe
Nanbeige4.2-3B on Apple M2 Pro: the context ladder for 16 GB of unified memory
- multimodaladvanced16GB+recipe
Fara1.5-9B on Apple M2 Pro: Browser Computer-Use Agent in 16GB Unified Memory
- multimodaladvanced16GB+recipe
Fara1.5-4B on Apple M2 Pro: Browser Computer-Use Agent in 16GB Unified Memory
- multimodalintermediate6GB+recipe
Bonsai 27B on Apple M2 Pro: a 27B Multimodal Model on 16GB Unified Memory via 1-bit GGUF + Metal
- llmintermediate16GB+recipe
Gemma 4 12B on Apple M2 Pro: Local Private Assistant via llama.cpp / Ollama (16GB)
- llmintermediate16GB+recipe
Phi-4 (14B) on Apple M2 Pro: Local Private Assistant via llama.cpp / Ollama (16GB)