Will it run? / Mistral nemo 12B / Mac mini M2 (16GB)

Can the Mac mini M2 (16GB) run Mistral nemo 12B?

Comfortable Yes, at about 11 tokens/sec (estimated). That reads at a comfortable pace.

11estimated tokens/sec
8.6 GBmemory needed
10.7 GBavailable to the model
100 GB/smemory bandwidth
ollama run mistral-nemo:12b

Check the Mac mini M2 (16GB) price →

How we got this number

Each generated token reads the whole model from memory once: 7.1 GB. The Mac mini M2 (16GB) moves 100 GB/s, so the ceiling is 14 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 Mistral nemo 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)69 tok/s$3,799Check price →
Mac mini M5 Pro (24GB)35 tok/s$1,699Check price →

Other models on the Mac mini M2 (16GB)

lfm 2.5 8B (A1B)Fast65 tok/s
minicpm v4.6 1BFast50 tok/s
Gemma 2 2BFast50 tok/s
codeGemma 2BFast50 tok/s
Gemma 2BFast47 tok/s
smollm 2 1.7BFast44 tok/s