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Can the Apple M3 Max (48 GB) run Step 5 Preview (600B-A27B)?

67Good quality (B) · 67 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Step 5 Preview (600B-A27B) needs about 246 GB even at Q2_K; the Apple M3 Max (48 GB) has 36.0 GB usable.

Download Step 5 Preview (600B-A27B)

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/stepfun-ai/Step-5-Preview-BF16 (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

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

github.com/stepfun-ai/Step-5-Preview (opens in a new tab)

git clone https://github.com/stepfun-ai/Step-5-Preview

Links checked 6 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 67Good quality (B) · 67 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (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 M3 Max (48 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.9.2 / 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 score9.2 / 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 M3 Max (48 GB)

Quant Memory needed Available Speed Runs Quality Download
Q2_K 246 GB 36.0 GB — Won't run 67Good quality (B) · 67 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. All files (opens in a new tab)
Q3_K_M 300 GB 36.0 GB — Won't run 81Great quality (A) · 81 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. All files (opens in a new tab)
Q4_K_M 373 GB 36.0 GB — Won't run 92Excellent quality (A+) · 92 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 12/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. All files (opens in a new tab)
Q5_K_M 433 GB 36.0 GB — Won't run 94Excellent quality (A+) · 94 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 12/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. All files (opens in a new tab)
Q6_K 500 GB 36.0 GB — Won't run 96Excellent quality (A+) · 96 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 12/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. All files (opens in a new tab)
Q8_0 645 GB 36.0 GB — Won't run 97Excellent quality (A+) · 97 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 13/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. All files (opens in a new tab)
F16 1,213 GB 36.0 GB — Won't run 97Excellent quality (A+) · 97 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 13/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. 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 M3 Max (48 GB)

Quick answers

How much memory does Step 5 Preview (600B-A27B) need on the M3 Max 48GB?

Even at Q2_K it needs about 246 GB; the M3 Max 48GB has 36.0 GB usable.

What can the M3 Max 48GB run instead?

Gemma 4 26B-A4B, Qwen3.6 35B-A3B and MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B run best on it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

What hardware can run Step 5 Preview (600B-A27B)?

M3 Ultra 512GB, M5 Ultra 512GB and AMD Instinct MI325X 256GB 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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