Can MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36 GB run Muse Glimmer (30B)?
36 GB unified · 150 GB/s memory bandwidth · Muse Glimmer (30B) has 29.6B parameters.
Short answer
Yes, acceptable for chat; not recommended for coding in a repository.
Best quantization for chat: Q4_K_M (16 GB of weights) on LM Studio. Generation: 6–8 tok/s, leaving about 11 GB free for your other apps.
How it rates for each workload
Same model and machine, different jobs. Agents and long documents send far bigger prompts than chat, so they need much more speed and memory.
| Workload | Verdict | Quant | Generation | First reply | Context | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatwith Open WebUI | Acceptable | Q4_K_M | 6–8 tok/s | ≈9 s | 8K | Details |
| Coding questionswith Continue | Borderline | Q4_K_M | 6–8 tok/s | ≈60 s | 16K | Details |
| Coding in a repositorywith Aider | Technically Runs | Q4_K_M | 6–8 tok/s | ≈3 min | 32K | Details |
| Agentic codingwith OpenCode | Technically Runs | Q4_K_M | 6–8 tok/s | ≈4 min | 32K | Details |
| Long documents (64K)with Open WebUI | Borderline | Q4_K_M | 5–7 tok/s | ≈13 min | 64K | Details |
Speeds are estimates calibrated against measured benchmarks on similar hardware. “First reply” is the time to read the workload’s opening prompt. How we calculate
Other models for MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36 GB
The best-rated models for chat on this machine.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B40–55 tok/sExcellent
- Gemma 4 26B-A4B30–45 tok/sExcellent
- LFM2.5 24B-A2B55–75 tok/sExcellent
- Qwen3.5 35B-A3B40–55 tok/sExcellent
- gpt-oss-20b35–45 tok/sExcellent
- GLM-4.7-Flash (30B-A3B)40–55 tok/sExcellent
Cheapest machines for Muse Glimmer (30B)
Hardware rated comfortable or better for chat, lowest price first.
- Desktop PC · Intel Arc Pro B60 24GB · 32 GB RAM$1,500 · 10–17 tok/sComfortable
- Desktop PC · Radeon RX 7900 XT · 32 GB RAM$1,550 · 25–40 tok/sExcellent
- Ryzen AI Max+ 395 mini PC / Framework Desktop · 64 GB$1,600 · 12–16 tok/sComfortable
- Desktop PC · Intel Arc Pro B60 24GB · 64 GB RAM$1,628 · 10–17 tok/sComfortable
- Desktop PC · GeForce RTX 3090 · 32 GB RAM$1,700 · 30–40 tok/sExcellent
- Mac mini M4 Pro 48 GB$1,799 · 10–14 tok/sComfortable
Same chip, other memory: 18 GB
Different tool, context size or workload?
These pages use typical settings. The full check models your exact setup.