Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8)
Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) loads in 23.3 GB at Q8_0, comfortably from 48 GB of memory — Macs included, starting at the MacBook Pro M5 Pro 48GB. Below is the memory math we ran for it, the cheapest card that fits, and the fastest machine we track.
How much memory does Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) need?
Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) is a 24B dense model built for chat, coding. The weights alone take 23.3 GB at Q8_0; add context and the OS, and it belongs in the 48 GB memory class. Every number below comes from the ModelFit engine — speeds are estimates, labeled est., because we do not benchmark hardware ourselves.
KV = fp16 estimate (q8_0 cache roughly halves it). "Comfortable" = weights + KV within the engine's tiered budget (~70-85% of memory).
Which machines run Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8)?
Verdicts come from the same engine that powers our fit checker — memory capacity first, bandwidth for speed. How we compute these numbers · Hugging Face model card
More Mistral models
Frequently asked questions
How much memory does Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) need?
23.3 GB for the Q8_0 weights, plus ~4.0 GB of KV-cache at 16k context — about 27.3 GB total. Comfortable from 48 GB of VRAM or unified memory.
Does Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) run on a Mac?
Yes — from the MacBook Pro M5 Pro 48GB (~9 tok/s est.). Unified memory means the RAM budget is the only limit.
What is the cheapest GPU for Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8)?
The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Strix Halo) is the cheapest tracked card that runs Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) comfortably — ~7 tok/s est. at ~$3,847 used (as of 2026-07-31).
Cite this page
ModelFit: Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) — specs, memory math and hardware verdicts. https://modelfit.io/models/mistral-small-3.1-24b/ (dataset updated 2026-09-03, CC BY 4.0).