Yes — with 92.2 GB to spare
Phi-4-mini 3.8B at Q4_K_M fits your M3 Max · 128 GB entirely in unified memory at 8K context, at an estimated 104 tokens per second. There is room for its full 128K window.
Fully in unified memory
8K context
Q4_K_M · 2.2 GB
MIT
Released Feb 2025
MIT-licensed, dense, and unusually strong on instruction following for its size.
The VRAM budget
weights 2.2 GB
Weights 2.2 GB
KV cache @ 8K 1.00 GB
Runtime overhead 0.6 GB
Free 92.2 GB of 96.0 GB
Quantisation ladder
| Quant | Weights | Total @ 8K | Max context | Tok/s | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F16 | 7.2 GB | 8.8 GB | 128K | 31 | Reference | Long context |
| Q8_0 | 3.8 GB | 5.4 GB | 128K | 59 | −0.1% ppl | Long context |
| Q6_K | 2.9 GB | 4.5 GB | 128K | 76 | −0.4% ppl | Long context |
| Q5_K_M | 2.5 GB | 4.1 GB | 128K | 88 | −0.8% ppl | Long context |
| Q4_K_M | 2.2 GB | 3.8 GB | 128K | 104 | −1.9% ppl | Recommended |
| Q3_K_M | 1.7 GB | 3.3 GB | 128K | 128 | −5.4% ppl | Long context |
| Q2_K | 1.5 GB | 3.1 GB | 128K | 149 | −15% ppl | Long context |
Quality is the published perplexity delta against f16 weights. Max context assumes an f16 KV cache; q8_0 roughly doubles it.
How to run it
$ pip install mlx-lm $ mlx_lm.generate --model mlx-community/Phi-4-mini-instruct-4bit \ --max-tokens 512 --prompt "Hello"
Apple's own array framework. The fastest path on Apple Silicon. More on MLX.
01Download is 2.2 GB. Keep it on an SSD — a first load off a spinning disk takes minutes.
02macOS caps what the GPU may wire down at about 96.0 GB of 128 GB. Raising it with iogpu.wired_limit_mb is possible, and risky.
03There is room to go to the model's full 128K context on this card.