Home / Best models for 16 GB GPUs
The best local AI models for a 16 GB GPU are the largest that fit fully in VRAM at Q4_K_M or better: gpt-oss-20b (Q4_K_M, over 150 tokens/sec on an RTX 4070 Ti Super), Phi-4 14B (Q6_K, about 33 tokens/sec on an RTX 4070 Ti Super), Gemma 4 12B (Q8_0, about 32 tokens/sec on an RTX 4070 Ti Super), Qwen3.5 9B (Q8_0, about 39 tokens/sec on an RTX 4070 Ti Super). Mixture-of-experts models like Qwen3.6 35B-A3B (~61 tok/s) and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B (~84 tok/s) also run usably with offload to 32 GB of system RAM. Estimates assume 8K context.
Check your exact card and RAM| Model | Best quant | Memory needed | Est. speed (RTX 4070 Ti Super) |
|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-oss-20b | Q4_K_M | 13.6 GB | 150+ tok/s |
| Phi-4 14B | Q6_K | 14.2 GB | 33 tok/s |
| Gemma 4 12B | Q8_0 | 13.8 GB | 32 tok/s |
| Qwen3.5 9B | Q8_0 | 11.3 GB | 39 tok/s |
| Gemma 4 E4B | Q8_0 | 9.3 GB | 84 tok/s |
| Gemma 4 E2B | Q8_0 | 6.1 GB | 150+ tok/s |
| Ministral 3 3B | Q8_0 | 4.8 GB | 100 tok/s |
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B · Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B · Gemma 4 26B A4B
RTX 5080RTX 5070 TiRTX 5060 Ti 16GBRTX 4080 SuperRTX 4080RTX 4070 Ti SuperRTX 4060 Ti 16GBRX 9070 XTRX 9070RX 9060 XT 16GBRX 7800 XTRX 6800 XTArc A770 16GB