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

Around 64 tokens per second. Token generation on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth, and this machine has 400 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 › M2 Max 32GB

Can an M2 Max 32GB Mac run gpt-oss-120b?

M2 Max · 32 GB unified memory · 400 GB/s · MacBook Pro 14" (M2 Max), Mac Studio (M2 Max)

No — not at Q4_K_M.

gpt-oss-120b needs about 71.3 GiB but an M2 Max 32GB Mac has only ~27.2 GiB available for a model — you are 44.1 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 ~27.2 GiB usable

Est. speed

64 tok/s

400 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	20	No
Q8_0	115.6 GiB	122.7 GiB	37	No
Q6_K	89.7 GiB	95.6 GiB	48	No
Q5_K_M	77.5 GiB	82.7 GiB	55	No
Q4_K_M	66.6 GiB	71.3 GiB	64	No
Q3_K_M	53.0 GiB	57.0 GiB	80	No
Q2_K	40.8 GiB	44.2 GiB	105	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 M2 Max 32GB 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
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B	32.8B	22.4 GiB	16	Yes, comfortably
Qwen2.5 32B	32.8B	22.4 GiB	16	Yes, comfortably
Qwen2.5-Coder 32B	32.8B	22.4 GiB	16	Yes, comfortably
Qwen3 32B	32.8B	22.4 GiB	16	Yes, comfortably
Qwen3 30B-A3B	30.5B	19.8 GiB	99	Yes, comfortably
Gemma 3 27B	27.4B	21.1 GiB	19	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 M2 Max 32GB Mac run gpt-oss-120b?: No. At Q4_K_M it needs about 71.3 GiB, and an M2 Max 32GB Mac has roughly 27.2 GiB available for a model after macOS takes its share.
How fast is gpt-oss-120b on an Mac?: Around 64 tokens per second. Token generation on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth, and this machine has 400 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.