How fast is DeepSeek V4 Flash on an Mac?

Around 0 tokens per second. Token generation on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth, and this machine has 68 GB/s.

How much memory does DeepSeek V4 Flash need?

166.0 GiB for the weights at Q4_K_M, plus 0.7 GiB for an 8K-token KV cache and about 9.1 GiB of runtime overhead — 175.7 GiB in total.

Home › DeepSeek V4 Flash › M1 8GB

Can an M1 8GB Mac run DeepSeek V4 Flash?

M1 · 8 GB unified memory · 68 GB/s · MacBook Air (M1), MacBook Pro 13" (M1)

No — not at Q4_K_M.

DeepSeek V4 Flash needs about 175.7 GiB but an M1 8GB Mac has only ~5.0 GiB available for a model — you are 170.7 GiB short. macOS will swap to SSD and generation will crawl.

Weights

166.0 GiB

290.94B params @ Q4_K_M

KV cache

0.7 GiB

8K context, FP16

Overhead

9.1 GiB

runtime + activations

Total needed

175.7 GiB

of ~5.0 GiB usable

Est. speed

0 tok/s

68 GB/s bandwidth

Max context

n/a

at Q4_K_M

Where the memory goes

Three things occupy memory when a model is loaded: the weights themselves, the KV cache that holds the conversation, and the runtime's own working buffers. Only the first is fixed — the KV cache grows with every token in your context.

Quantisation	Weights	Total	Fits?
FP16	541.9 GiB	570.5 GiB	No
Q8_0	287.9 GiB	303.8 GiB	No
Q6_K	223.5 GiB	236.2 GiB	No
Q5_K_M	193.1 GiB	204.2 GiB	No
Q4_K_M	166.0 GiB	175.7 GiB	No
Q3_K_M	132.1 GiB	140.2 GiB	No
Q2_K	101.6 GiB	108.2 GiB	No

The default. Best quality-per-gigabyte for most people.

How long a context fits

The KV cache is often what breaks a setup that looked fine at load time. Quantising it to 8-bit roughly halves its footprint with little measurable quality cost.

Context	KV cache	Total	FP16 KV	Q8 KV
2K	0.2 GiB	175.0 GiB	No	No
4K	0.3 GiB	175.2 GiB	No	No
8K	0.7 GiB	175.7 GiB	No	No
16K	1.3 GiB	176.7 GiB	No	No
32K	2.7 GiB	178.6 GiB	No	No
128K	10.8 GiB	190.3 GiB	No	No

What to run instead on an M1 8GB Mac

These are the largest models that fit comfortably on this machine at Q4_K_M with an 8K context.

Model	Size	Total	Tok/s
Llama 3.2 3B	3.21B	3.6 GiB	28	Yes, comfortably
Qwen2.5 3B	3.09B	2.9 GiB	29	Yes, comfortably
Gemma 2 2B	2.61B	3.0 GiB	34	Yes, comfortably
Qwen2.5 1.5B	1.54B	1.9 GiB	58	Yes, comfortably
Llama 3.2 1B	1.24B	1.8 GiB	72	Yes, comfortably

Macs that run DeepSeek V4 Flash comfortably

The smallest configuration that handles it is the M3 Ultra 256GB (Mac Studio (M3 Ultra)).

Mac	Memory	Bandwidth	Tok/s
M3 Ultra 256GB	256 GB	819 GB/s	4
M3 Ultra 512GB	512 GB	819 GB/s	4

Common questions

Can an M1 8GB Mac run DeepSeek V4 Flash?: No. At Q4_K_M it needs about 175.7 GiB, and an M1 8GB Mac has roughly 5.0 GiB available for a model after macOS takes its share.
How fast is DeepSeek V4 Flash on an Mac?: Around 0 tokens per second. Token generation on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth, and this machine has 68 GB/s.
How much memory does DeepSeek V4 Flash need?: 166.0 GiB for the weights at Q4_K_M, plus 0.7 GiB for an 8K-token KV cache and about 9.1 GiB of runtime overhead — 175.7 GiB in total.