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Can the Apple M5 (24 GB) run Qwen3-VL 235B-A22B Instruct?

62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Qwen3-VL 235B-A22B Instruct needs about 97.7 GB even at Q2_K; the Apple M5 (24 GB) has 16.1 GB usable.

Download Qwen3-VL 235B-A22B Instruct

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 qwen3-vl:235b

Quantized files · GGUF

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

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B-Instruct-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/Qwen/Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B-Instruct-GGUF

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B-Instruct (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

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

How it’s rated

Quality 62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.
How capable the model itself is at Q2_K, 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 Won't run
How well it runs on the Apple M5 (24 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.8.4 / 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.0.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.0.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.0.0 / 15
Match score8.4 / 100

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

It doesn’t fit, so only a reduced share of the quality points counts and fit, speed and memory use score zero.

Every quantization on the Apple M5 (24 GB)

Quant Memory needed Available Speed Runs Quality Download
Q2_K 97.7 GB 16.1 GB — Won't run 62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q3_K_M 119 GB 16.1 GB — Won't run 74Great quality (A) · 74 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 10/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q4_K_M 147 GB 16.1 GB — Won't run 84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 11/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF · part 1 of 3 (opens in a new tab)
Q5_K_M 171 GB 16.1 GB — Won't run 86Excellent quality (A+) · 86 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 11/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q6_K 197 GB 16.1 GB — Won't run 88Excellent quality (A+) · 88 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 11/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q8_0 253 GB 16.1 GB — Won't run 89Excellent quality (A+) · 89 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 12/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF · part 1 of 6 (opens in a new tab)
F16 475 GB 16.1 GB — Won't run 89Excellent quality (A+) · 89 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 12/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF · part 1 of 10 (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.

Hardware that can run it

Models that do run on the Apple M5 (24 GB)

Quick answers

How much memory does Qwen3-VL 235B-A22B Instruct need on the M5 24GB?

Even at Q2_K it needs about 97.7 GB; the M5 24GB has 16.1 GB usable.

What can the M5 24GB run instead?

Gemma 4 26B-A4B, Raon-1 mini Preview (30B-A4B) and Mellum2.1 Thinking (12B-A2.5B) run best on it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

What hardware can run Qwen3-VL 235B-A22B Instruct?

M3 Ultra 256GB, M3 Ultra 512GB and M2 Ultra 192GB run it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

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.

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