Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8)
Mistral Small 3.1 (Q8) loads in 23.3 GB at Q8_0 and is comfortable from 48 GB of memory, Macs included from the MacBook Pro M5 Pro 48GB. Below: the full memory math, the cheapest card that runs it well, and the fastest machine we track.
Memory math
KV = fp16 estimate (q8_0 cache roughly halves it). "Comfortable" = weights + KV within the engine's tiered budget (~70-85% of memory).
Hardware snapshot
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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).