Intelligence vs RAM footprint (bubble = tok/s on M4 Pro)
Hardware cost vs max intelligence tier
Top picks by RAM tier
Full model comparison
| Model | Q4 RAM | Min Mac | MMLU-Pro | Coding | tok/s | $ to run* | Source |
|---|
* Cheapest new/used Mac that fits this model at Q4. Your M2 8GB/256GB highlighted.
Official & community sources
- Open LLM Leaderboard — MMLU-Pro, GPQA, BBH, MATH (Eleuther harness)
- Artificial Analysis — Intelligence Index v4.1 for open models
- LMSYS Chatbot Arena — human Elo (mostly API models)
- Ollama library — Q4 file sizes = practical RAM floor
- SiliconScore M4 Pro — Apple Silicon tok/s
- AppleInsider price guide — Jul 2026 Mac deals
- Local AI Master — RAM tier buying guide