Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B on Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB)

Can the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB) run Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B?

Yes, it runs great

Runs great. At F16 it needs about 79.2 GB of 192 GB usable, with an estimated speed of 52.2 tok/s.

Best quant: F16
Generation speed: 52.2 tok/s
Prompt processing: 5,869 tok/s
First token (1K prompt): 0.3 s
Largest safe context: 256K

Best app to run it on the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB)

On macOS

Ollama

Command line + local API · runs on llama.cpp (ggml), MLX (Apple silicon, preview)

One command with Ollama’s own build of this model.
Serves an OpenAI-compatible API that other apps and coding tools can use.

ollama run nemotron-3.5-lightning:30b-a3b-bf16

LM Studio Point-and-click: search, download and chat in one window.
llama.cpp Usually the first to support new model architectures.

Want an agent? Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B supports tool use, so you can pair a llama.cpp or MLX LM server with one of these. Apps that run on this computer come first.

Coding agents

Personal assistants

How we choose: the files published for this model, your operating system and GPU, whether it fits fully in memory, and published speed tests (MLX vs llama.cpp on Apple silicon, vLLM vs llama.cpp vs Ollama on NVIDIA). Details.

Download Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B

Recommended for the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB): F16. Every other quantization has its own download link in the table below.

Quickest · Ollama

One command downloads a ready-to-run version and starts a chat.

Get Ollama at ollama.com/download (opens in a new tab) · model page (opens in a new tab)

ollama run nemotron-3.5-lightning:30b-a3b-bf16

Quantized files · GGUF

Works in LM Studio, llama.cpp, Jan and Ollama. No sign-in needed.

Download the F16 files (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/unsloth/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/unsloth/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-GGUF

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from NVIDIA, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers.

huggingface.co/nvidia/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3.5-Lightning-30B-A3B-BF16 (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

Reference code, inference scripts and docs from NVIDIA. The weights themselves download from Hugging Face.

github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/Nemotron (opens in a new tab)

NVIDIA’s Nemotron repo with recipes for the whole family.

git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/Nemotron

Links checked 3 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 81/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.: How capable the model itself is at F16, from its editorial quality tier scaled by the quantization or precision. It’s the same on any hardware that runs this variant. Scale: A+ 85+ · A 70+ · B 55+ · C 40+ · D under 40.
Runs Runs great: How well it runs on the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB): speed, capped by how well it fits in memory. Runs great: 30+ tokens/s (or near the image, video or decision speed target) · Runs well: 10+ tokens/s · Slow: 3+ tokens/s · Very slow: under 3 · Won’t run: doesn’t fit even with offload. A tight fit or RAM offload caps it at Runs well; heavy offload caps it at Slow.

Match score

To order lists, each result also gets a match score out of 100 from four parts. It favors the most capable model that still runs well.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.	32.4 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when the model fits in the share of unified memory the GPU can use; fewer when it goes past that limit.	25.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.	15.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.	9.5 / 15
Match score	81.9 / 100

The match score orders results; it is not shown as a grade. Quality and Runs are the two ratings in the tables.

Every quantization on the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Runs	Quality	Download
`Q2_K`	28.6 GB	192 GB	191 tok/s	Runs great	50Fair quality (C) · 50 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 66/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (IQ2_M) (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	31.5 GB	192 GB	169 tok/s	Runs great	60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 71/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (UD-Q3_K_XL) (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	35.3 GB	192 GB	146 tok/s	Runs great	68Good quality (B) · 68 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	38.4 GB	192 GB	130 tok/s	Runs great	69Good quality (B) · 69 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 76/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	41.9 GB	192 GB	116 tok/s	Runs great	71Great quality (A) · 71 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 77/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (UD-Q6_K_XL) (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	49.5 GB	192 GB	94.2 tok/s	Runs great	72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 78/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	79.2 GB	192 GB	52.2 tok/s	Runs great	72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 81/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF · folder (opens in a new tab) Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Memory figures assume 8K of context. Longer conversations or documents grow the KV cache.

Other hardware that runs it

72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 87/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M1 Max (64 GB) Q8_0 · 56.4 tok/s · Runs great
72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 87/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M4 Max (64 GB) Q8_0 · 71.4 tok/s · Runs great
72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 87/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell F16 · 98.2 tok/s · Runs great
71Great quality (A) · 71 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 87/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M4 Pro (48 GB) Q6_K · 53.8 tok/s · Runs great
69Good quality (B) · 69 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 86/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Q5_K_M · 194 tok/s · Runs great
68Good quality (B) · 68 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 84/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Q4_K_M · 158 tok/s · Runs well (tight fit)

Quick answers

How much memory does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B need on the M3 Ultra 256GB?

At F16 it needs about 79.2 GB. The M3 Ultra 256GB has 192 GB usable.

How fast is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B on the M3 Ultra 256GB?

About 52.2 tok/s at F16, an estimate from the hardware’s memory bandwidth and the size of the model.

Which quantization of Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B should I use on the M3 Ultra 256GB?

F16. Of the versions that fit, it is the one that runs best; when two run equally well, the check prefers the higher-rated one.

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.