Question 1

Can the Apple M3 Max run gpt-oss 120B MoE?

Accepted Answer

gpt-oss 120B MoE needs about 65.28GB working set (weights 65GB + KV cache 0.28GB at 4k context). The Apple M3 Max offers ~34GB usable — verdict: no. 65.3 GB vs 34 GB usable — does not fit

Question 2

How fast is gpt-oss 120B MoE on the Apple M3 Max?

Accepted Answer

~23–33 tok/s (active-expert estimate) on the Apple M3 Max. computed roofline: 400 GB/s × 0.55–0.80 efficiency window / 9.8GB (Q4_K_M) — bands, never points. MoE: file is 65GB (that decides fit) but only ~18B of experts activate per token (~9.8GB streamed) — band below is the active-expert estimate, optimistic; community MoE rows run several× the naive bandwidth math

Question 3

What should I run gpt-oss 120B MoE on instead?

Accepted Answer

NIMO AI Mini PC (128GB) runs it fully ($1999).

Can the Apple M3 Max run gpt-oss 120B MoE?

Run gpt-oss 120B MoE on instead