Will it run? / Gemma 2 9B / Mac mini M4 (16GB)

Can the Mac mini M4 (16GB) run Gemma 2 9B?

Comfortable Yes, at about 18 tokens/sec (estimated). That reads at a comfortable pace.

18estimated tokens/sec
6.9 GBmemory needed
10.7 GBavailable to the model
120 GB/smemory bandwidth
ollama run gemma2:9b

Check the Mac mini M4 (16GB) price →

How we got this number

Each generated token reads the whole model from memory once: 5.4 GB. The Mac mini M4 (16GB) moves 120 GB/s, so the ceiling is 22 tokens/sec. Real machines reach a fraction of that ceiling; we use 80%, calibrated against a measured Mac run. Send us your real numbers and we'll replace the estimate.

Faster machines for Gemma 2 9B

Mac Studio M5 Ultra (96GB)120+ tok/s$5,499Check price →
Mac Studio M5 Ultra (256GB)120+ tok/s$9,499Check price →
Mac Studio M5 Max (40-core GPU, 64GB)91 tok/s$3,799Check price →
Mac mini M5 Pro (24GB)46 tok/s$1,699Check price →

Other models on the Mac mini M4 (16GB)

DeepSeek-R1 1.5BFast87 tok/s
Qwen 1.8BFast87 tok/s
lfm 2.5 8B (A1B)Fast78 tok/s
Llama 3.2 1BFast74 tok/s
Qwen 3 1.7BFast69 tok/s
Granite 3.1 moe 1BFast69 tok/s