Ornith 1.5 122B — Hardware Requirements & GPU Compatibility
ChatFunctionsOrnith-1.5-122B is a mixture-of-experts language model from ornith-ai, the largest-capability member of the Ornith-1.5 family. It extends Ornith-1.0, which was built on Qwen3.5 and Gemma 4, and the team describes it as the product of an end-to-end self-improvement loop covering task generation, scaffolds, and solution rollouts. It has about 125 billion total parameters with roughly 12.7 billion active per token. A Q4 build needs roughly 71 GB of memory, and the card says the model serves on a single 80 GB GPU. The context window is 262,144 tokens, and the card describes extending it to roughly 1 million with YaRN scaling. It is released under the MIT license, which permits commercial use, and was published on October 16, 2026. The card reports results on Terminal-Bench 2.1, SWE-Bench Verified and Pro, MCP-Atlas, and Toolathlon-Verified. It gives vLLM and SGLang serving recipes with tool-call and reasoning parsers, and a quantized Mobile variant exists for edge devices.
Ornith 1.5 122B runs on a 96 GB+ Mac or a workstation GPU
Best local pick → Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 96GB) · Q4_K_M · 75.5 GB · ~44 tok/s
Macs from 48 GB (IQ2_M · ~51 tok/s)
MIT
Not set up for it?
Reference GPU · RTX 4090 24 GB
Estimates, ±20% · how we estimate
Run Ornith 1.5 122B
One recommended way. Every other method, OS and quant is in the step-by-step guide.
Recommended
ollama run hf.co/bartowski/Ornith-1.5-122B-GGUF:Q4_K_MQ4_K_M needs offload on the RTX 4090 · 51.5 GB short · 16K context
Download: Ornith-1.5-122B-Q4_K_M/Ornith-1.5-122B-Q4_K_M-00001-of-00002.gguf78.92 GB + 1 partbartowski
Other ways
each opens step-by-stepRun in cloud
Fits on RTX PRO 6000 (96 GB) (20 GB headroom) · Q4_K_M
- Generation speed
- ~108 tok/s
- generation speed
- Cost per 1M output tokens
- $3.43
- per 1M output tokens
How Much VRAM Does Ornith 1.5 122B Need?
Select a quantization level; the listed hardware adheres to it.
| Quantization | VRAM | +32K | On RTX 4090 (reference) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53.5 GB | 53.8 GB | 2-bit · K-quant — 2-bit quantization with K-quant improvements | Does not fit: needs 53.6 GB | |
| 55.1 GB | 55.3 GB | 3-bit small — 3-bit small quantization | Does not fit: needs 55.2 GB | |
| 61.4 GB | 61.6 GB | 3-bit medium — 3-bit medium quantization | Does not fit: needs 61.4 GB | |
| 62.9 GB | 63.2 GB | 4-bit · legacy — 4-bit legacy quantization | Does not fit: needs 63 GB | |
| 75.4 GB | 75.7 GB | 4-bit medium — 4-bit medium quantization — most popular sweet spot | Does not fit: needs 75.5 GB | |
| 89.5 GB | 89.7 GB | 5-bit medium — 5-bit medium quantization — good quality/size tradeoff | Does not fit: needs 89.6 GB | |
| 103.6 GB | 103.8 GB | 6-bit, very good — 6-bit quantization, very good quality | Does not fit: needs 103.7 GB | |
| 125.5 GB | 125.7 GB | 8-bit, near-lossless — 8-bit quantization, near-lossless | Does not fit: needs 125.5 GB |
Selected Q4_K_M
4-bit medium quantization75.5GBat 16K context
- Weights
- 75.1 GB
- KV cache
- 0.2 GB
- Overhead
- 0.3 GB
Doesn't fit RTX 4090 (reference) · needs 51.5 GB more
Which Hardware Can Run Ornith 1.5 122B?
Q4_K_M · 75.4 GBOrnith 1.5 122B (Q4_K_M) requires 75.4 GB of VRAM to load the model weights. For comfortable inference with headroom for KV cache and system overhead, 99+ GB is recommended. Using the full 262K context window can add up to 2.3 GB, bringing total usage to 77.8 GB. No consumer GPU has enough memory. 30 devices with unified memory can run Ornith 1.5 122B, including Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 256GB), Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 512GB), Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 96GB).
48 GB
48 GB tier →Q4_K_M · best fit IQ2_M (42.7 GB)
2 Mac classes · 1 device family
M5 Max48 GB~51Simulate output on Mac Studio M5 Max (48 GB)M5 Pro48 GB~34Simulate output on Mac Mini M5 Pro (48 GB)Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-96-100)~29Simulate output on Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme Copilot+ PC96 GB
fits · 20.5 GB free · up to 256K ctx
2 Mac classes
M3 Ultra*96 GB~44Simulate output on Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 96GB)M3 Max*96 GB~22Simulate output on MacBook Pro 14" M3 Max (96 GB)
By VRAM tier · typical GPUs and Macs at Q4_K_M
Alternatives to Ornith 1.5 122B
Ornith family · 12 models →Similar models
6| Model | Score | VRAM | tok/s | Why it is similar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.5 122B A10BAlibaba | 109.4 | 75.5 GB | —needs > 24 GB | same size |
| GPT OSS 120BOpenAI | 97.5 | 70.8 GB | —needs > 24 GB | same size |
| NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Super VL 120B A12B BF16NVIDIA | — | 87.7 GB | —needs > 24 GB | same size |
| Ling 3.0 Flash VLInclusion AI | — | 76 GB | —needs > 24 GB | same size |
| Leanstral 1.5 119B A6BMistral AI | — | 84 GB | —needs > 24 GB | same size |
| Laguna S 2.1poolside | — | 72.5 GB | —needs > 24 GB | same size |
Specifications
- Publisher
- ornith-ai
- Family
- Ornith
- Parameters
- 125.1B
- Active parameters
- 12.7B per token
- Architecture
- Qwen3_5MoeForConditionalGeneration
- Context Length
- 262,144 tokens
- Vocabulary Size
- 248,320
- Release Date
- 2026-10-16
- License
- MIT
Frequently Asked Questions
How much VRAM does Ornith 1.5 122B need?
Ornith 1.5 122B requires 75.4 GB of VRAM at Q4_K_M, or 250.6 GB at BF16. Full 262K context adds up to 2.3 GB (77.8 GB total).
VRAM = Weights + KV Cache + Overhead
Weights = 125.1B × 4.8 bits ÷ 8 = 75.1 GB
KV Cache + Overhead ≈ 0.3 GB (at 2K context + ~0.3 GB framework)
Fit ratings and hardware model lists check this model with room for a 16K-token context, which needs a little more memory.
KV Cache + Overhead ≈ 2.7 GB (at full 262K context)
VRAM usage by quantization
Can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 run Ornith 1.5 122B?
No — Ornith 1.5 122B requires at least 34.8 GB at IQ2_XXS, which exceeds the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090's 32 GB of VRAM.
What's the best quantization for Ornith 1.5 122B?
For Ornith 1.5 122B, Q4_K_M (75.4 GB) offers the best balance of quality and VRAM usage. Q4_K_L (77.0 GB) provides better quality if you have the VRAM. The smallest option is IQ2_XXS at 34.8 GB.
VRAM requirement by quantization
★ Recommended — best balance of quality and VRAM usage.
Can I run Ornith 1.5 122B on a Mac?
Yes — Mac Studio M5 Max (48 GB) and 55 other Macs can run Ornith 1.5 122B, the smallest at IQ2_M. Apple Silicon uses unified memory, so the model shares RAM with the system. At Q4_K_M you need at least 75.4 GB of usable unified memory (RAM minus macOS overhead), from Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 96GB).
Can I run Ornith 1.5 122B locally?
Yes — Ornith 1.5 122B can run locally on consumer hardware. Popular tools include Ollama, LM Studio, and llama.cpp.
How fast is Ornith 1.5 122B?
At Q4_K_M, Ornith 1.5 122B can reach ~89 tok/s on AMD Instinct MI350X. Speed depends mainly on GPU memory bandwidth. Real-world results typically within ±20%.
tok/s = 1000 ÷ (active GB ÷ (bandwidth GB/s × efficiency) × 1000 + layers × routing ms)
Mixture-of-Experts: just the active experts get read for each token, along with a fixed routing cost per layer.
Example: NVIDIA B200 → 7.7 GB active ÷ (8000 × 0.65) = 1.48 ms, plus 48 layers × 0.055 ms = 2.64 ms, so 1000 ÷ 4.12 ms = ~243 tok/s
Estimated speed at Q4_K_M (75.4 GB)
Real-world results typically within ±20%. Speed depends on batch size, quantization kernel, and software stack.
What's the download size of Ornith 1.5 122B?
At Q4_K_M, the download is about 75.05 GB. The full-precision BF16 version is 250.17 GB. The smallest option (IQ2_XXS) is 34.40 GB.
Which GPUs can run Ornith 1.5 122B?
No single consumer GPU has enough VRAM to run Ornith 1.5 122B at Q4_K_M (75.4 GB). Multi-GPU or professional hardware is required.
Which devices can run Ornith 1.5 122B?
30 devices with unified memory can run Ornith 1.5 122B at Q4_K_M (75.4 GB), including ASUS Ascent GX10, Beelink GTR9 Pro (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB), Framework Desktop (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB), GMKtec EVO-X2 (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB). Apple Silicon Macs use unified memory shared between CPU and GPU, making them well-suited for local LLM inference.