Will it run? / Gemma 3 12B / Mac mini M6 (32GB)

Can the Mac mini M6 (32GB) run Gemma 3 12B?

Comfortable Yes, at about 17 tokens/sec (estimated). That reads at a comfortable pace.

17estimated tokens/sec
9.6 GBmemory needed
21.4 GBavailable to the model
170 GB/smemory bandwidth
ollama run gemma3:12b

Check the Mac mini M6 (32GB) price →

How we got this number

Each generated token reads the whole model from memory once: 8.1 GB. The Mac mini M6 (32GB) moves 170 GB/s, so the ceiling is 21 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 3 12B

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)61 tok/s$3,799Check price →
Mac mini M5 Pro (24GB)30 tok/s$1,699Check price →

Other models on the Mac mini M6 (32GB)

lfm 2.5 8B (A1B)Fast111 tok/s
Gemma 2BFast80 tok/s
smollm 2 1.7BFast76 tok/s
starCoder 2 3BFast76 tok/s
falcon 3 1BFast76 tok/s
Qwen2.5 3BFast72 tok/s