Apple
MacBook Air M2 16GB with 16 GB unified memory. Second-generation Apple Silicon with improved GPU performance and memory bandwidth, offering a strong balance of efficiency and AI capability.
Architecture
Apple M2 is the second generation of Apple Silicon, with improved GPU cores and higher memory bandwidth. The M2 Ultra scales to 192 GB unified memory via UltraFusion die-to-die interconnect.
AI Relevance
Higher memory bandwidth (~50% more than M1 in Ultra config) directly improves token generation speed for LLMs. The M2 Ultra with 192 GB unified memory can run 70B models at full Q4 quantization with good performance.
M2 brings a 10-core GPU with improved memory bandwidth. The 100 GB/s bandwidth in base models and up to 200 GB/s in Pro/Max variants provides solid decode throughput for local LLMs.
Agentic Coding
CThis model is still usable for agentic-coding, but it is not the most specialized pick. It sits in the middle of the current model mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama.
Chat
CThis model is a direct match for chat. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
Coding
CThis model is still usable for coding, but it is not the most specialized pick. It sits in the middle of the current model mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama.
RAG
CThis model is a direct match for rag. It sits in the middle of the current model mix. It should run, but memory headroom will be limited.
Reasoning
CThis model is a direct match for reasoning. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8BQwen3.5 4B
gemma 2b
Qwen2.5 1.5B InstructQwen2.5 3B InstructQwen3.5 9B
DeepSeek R1 671B
Devstral 2 123B Instruct
GLM-5Qwen3.5 27BQwen3.5 35B A3B
Kimi K2.5Mistral Large 3Mistral Small 4 119BQwen3-Coder 30B A3B InstructQwen3-Coder 480B A35B InstructQwen3-Coder-NextQwen3.5 122B A10BDeepSeek V3 671BMixtral 8x22BQwen 2.5 72BQwen 3 235B A22BQwen3-VL 30B A3B InstructQwen3.5 397B A17BDevstral Small 2 24B Instruct
Llama 3.3 70BLlama 4 Maverick 17B 128E
Command A 111BQwen 2.5 Coder 32BQwen 2.5 VL 72Bgemma 3 27b itCodestral 2 25.08Devstral Small 1.1Just out of reach
High-quality models that need a bit more memory
Upgrade paths
See what you unlock with more powerful hardware
Upgrade options
RTX A2000 12GBNext step up
~$329 MSRP
~$1,199 MSRP
~$8,000 MSRP
