NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Q3_K_M) — 80.8 GBon Apple M4 Max 128GB
Overview
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B is a 123.61B parameter moe language model by NVIDIA, with code, multilingual, thinking, tool-calls capabilities. It supports a context window of up to 262,144 tokens.
Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B is a 123.61-billion-parameter hybrid Mamba-2 Transformer LatentMoE model from NVIDIA, activating 12 billion parameters per token across 22 of 512 routed experts plus 1 shared expert. Trained on over 25 trillion tokens, it targets agentic reasoning, code generation, tool calling, and multilingual conversation in 7 languages. A 256K context window, toggleable thinking mode, and multi-token prediction enable high-throughput inference for complex multi-agent workflows. Its MoE sparsity quantizes well to GGUF for self-hosted deployment on multi-GPU setups.
At Q3_K_M quantization (low quality tier), the model weighs 57.48 GB. This fits within the 128 GB of VRAM on Apple M4 Max 128GB, enabling full GPU inference.
Hardware Requirements
| Model size | 57.48 GB |
| VRAM available | 128 GB |
| VRAM used | 80.8 GB |
| System RAM | |
| Min RAM required | 0 GB |
| GPU layers | 88 / 88 |
| Context size | 262,144 |
| Backend | metal |
| Flash attention | Yes |
| Reading from disk | Yes |
Performance Notes
Deploy
Install llama.cpp
brew install llama.cppDownload Model
curl -L -o nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b.gguf "https://huggingface.co/unsloth/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Super-120B-A12B-GGUF/resolve/main/UD-Q3_K_M/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Super-120B-A12B-UD-Q3_K_M-00001-of-00003.gguf"Start Server
llama-server \
-m nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b.gguf \
--n-gpu-layers 88 \
--ctx-size 262144 \
--flash-attnVerify
curl http://localhost:8080/healthFrequently Asked Questions
How much VRAM does NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Q3_K_M) need?
The Q3_K_M quantization of NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B requires 57.48 GB. All 88 layers fit in the 128 GB of VRAM available on Apple M4 Max 128GB, enabling full GPU acceleration.
Can I run NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B on Apple M4 Max 128GB?
Yes. Apple M4 Max 128GB provides 128 GB of VRAM, which is enough to run NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Q3_K_M) with all layers on the GPU for optimal performance.
What is quantization?
Quantization reduces a model's numerical precision from its original floating-point format to a more compact representation. This shrinks the file size and VRAM footprint, making it possible to run large models on consumer hardware. The trade-off is a small reduction in output quality. Q3_K_M compresses NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B from its original size down to 57.48 GB.
What quantization should I choose for NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B?
Q3_K_M is a low-quality quantization. Higher-quality quants (Q8, Q6) preserve more model accuracy but need more VRAM. Lower quants (Q4, Q3, Q2) reduce VRAM usage at the cost of some quality. Choose based on your available hardware and quality requirements.
What is flash attention and why is it enabled?
Flash attention is a memory-efficient algorithm that speeds up the attention mechanism in transformer models. It reduces VRAM usage during inference by avoiding the materialisation of the full attention matrix. For NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B on Apple M4 Max 128GB, flash attention is enabled to maximise context length and throughput within the available 128 GB of VRAM.
What is MoE and how does it affect deployment?
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture with 512 experts, of which 22 are active per token. This means only a fraction of the model weights are used for each inference step, allowing MoE models to be larger in total parameter count while remaining efficient at inference time.