16GB VRAM

RTX 5070 Ti — what LLMs can it run?

64 of 112 indexed models fit comfortably in 16GB at 4K context, each at the highest-quality quant that still leaves headroom.

The short answer for RTX 5070 Ti

16 GB, 896 GB/s GDDR7. 64 of 112 models in this index fit comfortably at 4K context; 76 load at all.

Biggest that fits
Mistral Small 24B Instruct — 13.2 GB at AWQ INT4 — 2.8 GB spare at 4K, so longer context comes out of a thin margin.
Room to grow
Stable LM 2 12B Chat — 8.3 GB at Q4_K_M — under 60% of the card, which leaves 7.7 GB for a long context window or a second process.
Speed ceiling
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct at Q4_K_M reads 4.6 GB of weights per token, so 896 GB/s puts a hard ceiling near 194 tok/s. That is arithmetic on two published numbers, not a benchmark — real throughput lands below it. No run on this card has been measured here, so there is nothing to compare the ceiling against.
The wall you will hit
Capacity. 64 of 112 models clear 16 GB comfortably at 4K context, and the ones that do not are short by whole gigabytes rather than by a rounding error — at 896 GB/s the memory system is not what holds this card back. Moving up a size class is what changes the list, not a different quant.
Best local LLM for 16GB

32B · 6

RTX 5070 Ti — what LLMs can it run? — 32B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s
Mistral Small 24B Instruct24BAWQ INT413.23 GB+2.8 GB≤79Ceiling
Devstral Small 1.1 24B24BAWQ INT413.02 GB+3 GB≤80Ceiling
Magistral Small 1.2 24B24BAWQ INT413.02 GB+3 GB≤80Ceiling
Codestral 22B22BAWQ INT412.56 GB+3.4 GB≤85Ceiling
ERNIE 4.5 21B-A3B21B-A3BQ4_K_M14.05 GB+1.9 GB≤519Ceiling
GPT-OSS 20B21B MoEMXFP412.76 GB+3.2 GB≤453Ceiling

14B · 19

RTX 5070 Ti — what LLMs can it run? — 14B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s
InternLM2 20B Chat20BQ4_K_M13.43 GB+2.6 GB56–73Derived
DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct16B-A2.4BQ4_K_M10.08 GB+5.9 GB≤648Ceiling
DeepSeek-V2-Lite Chat16B-A2.4BQ4_K_M10.08 GB+5.9 GB≤648Ceiling
StarCoder2 15B15BQ4_K_M10.19 GB+5.8 GB74–97Derived
Qwen3 14B Instruct14BQ5_K_M11.65 GB+4.4 GB64–85Derived
Qwen2.5 14B Instruct14BQ5_K_M11.73 GB+4.3 GB64–85Derived
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B14BEXL2 4.65bpw9.75 GB+6.3 GB≤110Ceiling
Phi-4 14B14BQ5_K_M11.77 GB+4.2 GB64–85Derived
Phi-3 Medium 14B Instruct14BQ6_K12.86 GB+3.1 GB58–77Derived
Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct12BQ6_K11.14 GB+4.9 GB67–89Derived
Gemma 3 12B IT12BQ5_K_M9.84 GB+6.2 GB77–102Derived
Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B Thinking12B-A2.5BQ8_013.6 GB+2.4 GB≤355Ceiling
Stable LM 2 12B Chat12BQ4_K_M8.35 GB+7.7 GB91–121Derived
Gemma 4 12B IT12BQ8_013.82 GB+2.2 GB53–70Derived
Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct11BQ8_012.9 GB+3.1 GB57–76Derived
Solar 10.7B Instruct11BQ4_K_M7.6 GB+8.4 GB103–137Derived
Falcon 3 10B Instruct10BQ4_K_M7.28 GB+8.7 GB106–141Derived
Gemma 2 9B Instruct9BQ8_011.7 GB+4.3 GB68–90Derived
Qwen3.5 9B9BQ8_010.37 GB+5.6 GB68–90Derived

7B · 25

RTX 5070 Ti — what LLMs can it run? — 7B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s
GLM-4-9B-Chat9BQ8_010.16 GB+5.8 GB70–93Derived
Qwen3-VL 8B Instruct8BQ8_010.39 GB+5.6 GB72–95Derived
Granite 4.2 8B8BQ8_010.45 GB+5.6 GB72–95Derived
Ministral 3 8B Instruct8BQ8_010.02 GB+6 GB74–98Derived
Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct7BQ4_K_M5.49 GB+10.5 GB133–177Derived
Granite 3.1 8B Instruct8BQ4_K_M5.88 GB+10.1 GB135–178Derived
Qwen3 8B Instruct8BQ6_K7.64 GB+8.4 GB100–132Derived
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct8BQ8_09.47 GB+6.5 GB79–104Derived
Nous Hermes 3 Llama 3.1 8B8BEXL2 4.65bpw5.43 GB+10.6 GB≤202Ceiling
Aya 23 8B8BQ4_K_M5.64 GB+10.4 GB138–182Derived
OpenChat 3.6 8B8BEXL2 4.65bpw5.43 GB+10.6 GB≤202Ceiling
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B8BQ5_K_M6.51 GB+9.5 GB117–155Derived
InternLM2 7B Chat7BQ4_K_M5.45 GB+10.6 GB143–189Derived
Qwen2.5 7B Instruct7BQ6_K6.77 GB+9.2 GB107–142Derived
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct7BEXL2 4.65bpw4.87 GB+11.1 GB≤213Ceiling
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B7BEXL2 4.65bpw4.87 GB+11.1 GB≤213Ceiling
Gemma 4 E4B ITE4BQ8_08.46 GB+7.5 GB84–111Derived
OLMo 2 7B Instruct7BQ8_010.3 GB+5.7 GB86–114Derived
OLMo 3 7B Instruct7BQ8_010.3 GB+5.7 GB86–114Derived
WizardLM-2 7B7BQ4_K_M5.14 GB+10.9 GB153–202Derived
Mistral 7B Instruct v0.37BQ6_K6.75 GB+9.3 GB113–149Derived
Zephyr 7B Beta7BQ6_K6.75 GB+9.3 GB113–149Derived
Gemma 4 E2B ITE2BQ8_05.2 GB+10.8 GB≤191Ceiling
Qwen3.5 4B4BQ8_04.97 GB+11 GB≤204Ceiling
Gemma 3 4B IT4BQ8_05.05 GB+11 GB≤206Ceiling

≤3B · 14

RTX 5070 Ti — what LLMs can it run? — ≤3B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s
Qwen3 4B Instruct4BQ6_K4.05 GB+12 GB≤287Ceiling
Phi-4 Mini Instruct3.8BQ8_04.81 GB+11.2 GB≤231Ceiling
Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct3.8BQ8_05.89 GB+10.1 GB≤232Ceiling
Granite 4.2 3B3BQ8_04.41 GB+11.6 GB≤243Ceiling
Llama 3.2 3B Instruct3BQ8_04.05 GB+12 GB≤277Ceiling
Qwen2.5 3B Instruct3BQ8_03.59 GB+12.4 GB≤287Ceiling
SmolLM3 3B3BQ8_03.73 GB+12.3 GB≤288Ceiling
Gemma 2 2B Instruct2BQ8_03.34 GB+12.7 GB≤341Ceiling
Qwen3.5 2B2BQ8_02.23 GB+13.8 GB≤453Ceiling
Qwen3 1.7B Instruct1.7BQ8_02.39 GB+13.6 GB≤515Ceiling
Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct1.5BQ8_01.83 GB+14.2 GB≤578Ceiling
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct1BQ8_01.51 GB+14.5 GB≤717Ceiling
Qwen3.5 0.8B0.8BQ8_00.94 GB+15.1 GB≤1106Ceiling
Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct0.5BQ8_00.6 GB+15.4 GB≤1829Ceiling

How this list is built

Each row is the lowest-perplexity-loss quant of that model whose estimated total — weights plus KV cache at 4K context plus activation buffer — uses at most 88% of the card. That is the calculator's "green" threshold, so every row here has real headroom rather than only just fitting. Raise the context length and the list shortens; the calculator lets you check any combination directly. The speed column is this card: a measured run, a range scaled from this card's own Llama 2 7B benchmark, or a bandwidth ceiling. A figure that only exists for the RTX 4090 is labelled as that card.

A further 12 models load but with no headroom to spare (up to 105% of VRAM) — the Quant Hub’s GPU chips count those too, which is why its number is higher.

Measured on this card

No benchmark runs in this index were recorded on a RTX 5070 Ti. Every figure on this page is calculated from the model architecture and the quant level — treat them as estimates, not measurements.

Cards with the same budget

What fits is decided by memory, so every 16GB card of this type returns the same list. These pages are not different answers — they differ in throughput, which this index does not measure per card.

The same 16GB in system memory is a different machine — everything on this page fits there, at a speed set by your DIMMs rather than a graphics bus: 16 GB RAM (CPU)

Same list, different speed — play one sentence on both cards: RTX 5070 Ti vs RTX 5080 (Qwen3 14B Instruct) · RTX 5070 Ti vs RTX 5060 Ti 16G (Qwen3 14B Instruct) · RTX 5070 Ti vs RTX 4080 Super (Qwen3 14B Instruct)

Setup guides for this card

Step-by-step guides written for the RTX 5070 Ti's runtime or memory size, with the commands and the checks that prove the model is running on the card.

Stepping up

A RTX 4090 (24GB) fits 22 more of the indexed models than this card. RTX 4090 →

Before buying, hear the speed difference on a model both cards hold: RTX 5070 Ti vs RTX 4090 (Qwen3 14B Instruct) →

Common questions

What is the best local LLM for an RTX 5070 Ti?

For everyday use, Stable LM 2 12B Chat at Q4_K_M — about 8.3 GB of the card's 16 GB at 4K context, leaving 7.7 GB for a longer window. If you want the largest thing that will load, that is Mistral Small 24B Instruct at AWQ INT4 (13.2 GB, 2.8 GB spare). "Best" here means best fit for the memory budget — this index does not run task benchmarks, so it cannot tell you which model is smarter.

Can an RTX 5070 Ti run Gemma 4 26B-A4B IT?

Only just. Its smallest build here, Q4_K_M, needs about 16.4 GB against 16.0 GB usable — that loads with nothing else running, with no margin for a longer context window. It is not on the list above, which requires a model to stay inside 88% of usable capacity.

How many tokens per second does an RTX 5070 Ti do on an 8B model at Q4?

This index has no measured run on this card, so it does not publish a figure. What can be stated from specifications: generating a token requires reading every weight once, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct at Q4_K_M is 4.6 GB of weights, and this card moves 896 GB/s — a ceiling near 194 tok/s. Batch size, context length, the runtime and how much of the model sits in cache all take you below it.

RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 for local LLMs?

They hold the same models: 16 GB against 16 GB fits 64 and 64 of 112 respectively at 4K. The difference is throughput — 896 GB/s against 960 GB/s, a 1.1× gap in how fast the weights can be read, which is what token generation is bound by. The RTX 5080 generates faster on any model both can hold.

64 of 112 indexed models fit comfortably in 16GB at 4K context, each at the highest-quality quant that still leaves headroom.

This page's figures change when the model or the runtime does.Last updated 2026-10-20 RSS → /feed.xml