How fast is gpt-oss-120b on an Mac?

Around 11 tokens per second. Token generation on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth, and this machine has 68 GB/s. Because this is a mixture-of-experts model only 5.1B of its 116.8B parameters are read per token, which is why it is faster than its size suggests.

How much memory does gpt-oss-120b need?

66.6 GiB for the weights at Q4_K_M, plus 0.6 GiB for an 8K-token KV cache and about 4.1 GiB of runtime overhead — 71.3 GiB in total.

Home › gpt-oss-120b › M1 16GB

Can an M1 16GB Mac run gpt-oss-120b?

M1 · 16 GB unified memory · 68 GB/s · MacBook Air (M1), Mac mini (M1)

No — not at Q4_K_M.

gpt-oss-120b needs about 71.3 GiB but an M1 16GB Mac has only ~13.0 GiB available for a model — you are 58.3 GiB short. macOS will swap to SSD and generation will crawl.

Weights

66.6 GiB

116.8B params @ Q4_K_M

KV cache

0.6 GiB

8K context, FP16

Overhead

4.1 GiB

runtime + activations

Total needed

71.3 GiB

of ~13.0 GiB usable

Est. speed

11 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	Tok/s	Fits?
FP16	217.6 GiB	229.8 GiB	3	No
Q8_0	115.6 GiB	122.7 GiB	6	No
Q6_K	89.7 GiB	95.6 GiB	8	No
Q5_K_M	77.5 GiB	82.7 GiB	9	No
Q4_K_M	66.6 GiB	71.3 GiB	11	No
Q3_K_M	53.0 GiB	57.0 GiB	14	No
Q2_K	40.8 GiB	44.2 GiB	18	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	0.1 GiB	70.7 GiB	No	No
4K	0.3 GiB	70.9 GiB	No	No
8K	0.6 GiB	71.3 GiB	No	No
16K	1.1 GiB	72.2 GiB	No	No
32K	2.3 GiB	73.9 GiB	No	No
128K	9.0 GiB	84.3 GiB	No	No

What to run instead on an M1 16GB 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
Qwen3 14B	14.8B	10.9 GiB	6	Yes, comfortably
Gemma 2 9B	9.24B	9.0 GiB	10	Yes, comfortably
Qwen3 8B	8.2B	6.8 GiB	11	Yes, comfortably
Llama 3.1 8B	8.03B	6.6 GiB	11	Yes, comfortably
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B	7.62B	5.8 GiB	12	Yes, comfortably
Qwen2.5 7B	7.62B	5.8 GiB	12	Yes, comfortably

Macs that run gpt-oss-120b comfortably

The smallest configuration that handles it is the M3 Max 128GB (MacBook Pro 16" (M3 Max)).

Mac	Memory	Bandwidth	Tok/s
M3 Max 128GB	128 GB	400 GB/s	64
M4 Max 128GB	128 GB	546 GB/s	87
M2 Ultra 192GB	192 GB	800 GB/s	128
M3 Ultra 256GB	256 GB	819 GB/s	131
M3 Ultra 512GB	512 GB	819 GB/s	131

Common questions

Can an M1 16GB Mac run gpt-oss-120b?: No. At Q4_K_M it needs about 71.3 GiB, and an M1 16GB Mac has roughly 13.0 GiB available for a model after macOS takes its share.
How fast is gpt-oss-120b on an Mac?: Around 11 tokens per second. Token generation on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth, and this machine has 68 GB/s. Because this is a mixture-of-experts model only 5.1B of its 116.8B parameters are read per token, which is why it is faster than its size suggests.
How much memory does gpt-oss-120b need?: 66.6 GiB for the weights at Q4_K_M, plus 0.6 GiB for an 8K-token KV cache and about 4.1 GiB of runtime overhead — 71.3 GiB in total.