12GB VRAM

RTX 4070 Ti — what LLMs can it run?

56 of 110 indexed models fit comfortably in 12GB at 4K context, each at the highest-quality quant that still leaves headroom.

The short answer for RTX 4070 Ti

12 GB, 504 GB/s GDDR6X. 56 of 110 models in this index fit comfortably at 4K context; 58 load at all.

Biggest that fits
DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct — 10.1 GB at Q4_K_M — 1.9 GB spare at 4K, so longer context comes out of a thin margin.
Room to grow
Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct — 5.5 GB at Q4_K_M — under 60% of the card, which leaves 6.5 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 504 GB/s puts a hard ceiling near 109 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
Bandwidth, not capacity. The models on this page fit, but at 504 GB/s this card reads the whole weight set once per generated token — a 912 GB/s RTX 3080 Ti holds exactly the same 12 GB and moves those bytes 1.8× faster. Expect the same quant to generate proportionally slower here.
Best local LLM for 12GB

14B · 17

RTX 4070 Ti — what LLMs can it run? — 14B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s
DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct16B-A2.4BQ4_K_M10.08 GB+1.9 GB≤365Ceiling
DeepSeek-V2-Lite Chat16B-A2.4BQ4_K_M10.08 GB+1.9 GB≤365Ceiling
StarCoder2 15B15BQ4_K_M10.19 GB+1.8 GB≤58Ceiling
Qwen3 14B Instruct14BEXL2 4.65bpw9.66 GB+2.3 GB≤62Ceiling
Qwen2.5 14B Instruct14BEXL2 4.65bpw9.75 GB+2.3 GB≤62Ceiling
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B14BEXL2 4.65bpw9.75 GB+2.3 GB≤62Ceiling
Phi-4 14B14BQ4_K_M10.17 GB+1.8 GB≤60Ceiling
Phi-3 Medium 14B Instruct14BQ4_K_M9.73 GB+2.3 GB≤63Ceiling
Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct12BQ4_K_M8.42 GB+3.6 GB≤72Ceiling
Gemma 3 12B IT12BQ5_K_M9.84 GB+2.2 GB≤61Ceiling
Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B Thinking12B-A2.5BQ4_K_M8.59 GB+3.4 GB≤319Ceiling
Stable LM 2 12B Chat12BQ4_K_M8.35 GB+3.7 GB≤72Ceiling
Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct11BQ4_K_M7.66 GB+4.3 GB≤80Ceiling
Solar 10.7B Instruct11BQ4_K_M7.6 GB+4.4 GB≤82Ceiling
Falcon 3 10B Instruct10BQ4_K_M7.28 GB+4.7 GB≤84Ceiling
Gemma 2 9B Instruct9BQ4_K_M7.3 GB+4.7 GB≤95Ceiling
Qwen3.5 9B9BQ8_010.37 GB+1.6 GB≤54Ceiling

7B · 25

RTX 4070 Ti — what LLMs can it run? — 7B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s
GLM-4-9B-Chat9BQ8_010.16 GB+1.8 GB≤56Ceiling
Qwen3-VL 8B Instruct8BQ8_010.39 GB+1.6 GB≤57Ceiling
Granite 4.2 8B8BQ8_010.45 GB+1.6 GB≤57Ceiling
Ministral 3 8B Instruct8BQ8_010.02 GB+2 GB≤59Ceiling
Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct7BQ4_K_M5.49 GB+6.5 GB≤106Ceiling
Granite 3.1 8B Instruct8BQ4_K_M5.88 GB+6.1 GB≤107Ceiling
Qwen3 8B Instruct8BQ6_K7.64 GB+4.4 GB≤79Ceiling
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct8BQ8_09.47 GB+2.5 GB≤62Ceiling
Nous Hermes 3 Llama 3.1 8B8BEXL2 4.65bpw5.43 GB+6.6 GB≤114Ceiling
Aya 23 8B8BQ4_K_M5.64 GB+6.4 GB≤109Ceiling
OpenChat 3.6 8B8BEXL2 4.65bpw5.43 GB+6.6 GB≤114Ceiling
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B8BQ5_K_M6.51 GB+5.5 GB≤93Ceiling
InternLM2 7B Chat7BQ4_K_M5.45 GB+6.6 GB≤113Ceiling
Qwen2.5 7B Instruct7BQ6_K6.77 GB+5.2 GB≤85Ceiling
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct7BEXL2 4.65bpw4.87 GB+7.1 GB≤120Ceiling
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B7BEXL2 4.65bpw4.87 GB+7.1 GB≤120Ceiling
Gemma 4 E4B ITE4BQ8_08.46 GB+3.5 GB≤66Ceiling
OLMo 2 7B Instruct7BQ8_010.3 GB+1.7 GB≤68Ceiling
OLMo 3 7B Instruct7BQ8_010.3 GB+1.7 GB≤68Ceiling
WizardLM-2 7B7BQ4_K_M5.14 GB+6.9 GB≤121Ceiling
Mistral 7B Instruct v0.37BQ6_K6.75 GB+5.3 GB≤89Ceiling
Zephyr 7B Beta7BQ6_K6.75 GB+5.3 GB≤89Ceiling
Gemma 4 E2B ITE2BQ8_05.2 GB+6.8 GB≤107Ceiling
Qwen3.5 4B4BQ8_04.97 GB+7 GB≤115Ceiling
Gemma 3 4B IT4BQ8_05.05 GB+7 GB≤116Ceiling

≤3B · 14

RTX 4070 Ti — what LLMs can it run? — ≤3B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s
Qwen3 4B Instruct4BQ6_K4.05 GB+8 GB≤162Ceiling
Phi-4 Mini Instruct3.8BQ8_04.81 GB+7.2 GB≤130Ceiling
Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct3.8BQ8_05.89 GB+6.1 GB≤131Ceiling
Granite 4.2 3B3BQ8_04.41 GB+7.6 GB≤137Ceiling
Llama 3.2 3B Instruct3BQ8_04.05 GB+8 GB≤156Ceiling
Qwen2.5 3B Instruct3BQ8_03.59 GB+8.4 GB≤162Ceiling
SmolLM3 3B3BQ8_03.73 GB+8.3 GB≤162Ceiling
Gemma 2 2B Instruct2BQ8_03.34 GB+8.7 GB≤192Ceiling
Qwen3.5 2B2BQ8_02.23 GB+9.8 GB≤255Ceiling
Qwen3 1.7B Instruct1.7BQ8_02.39 GB+9.6 GB≤290Ceiling
Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct1.5BQ8_01.83 GB+10.2 GB≤325Ceiling
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct1BQ8_01.51 GB+10.5 GB≤403Ceiling
Qwen3.5 0.8B0.8BQ8_00.94 GB+11.1 GB≤622Ceiling
Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct0.5BQ8_00.6 GB+11.4 GB≤1029Ceiling

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 2 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 4070 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 12GB 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.

Setup guides for this card

Step-by-step guides written for the RTX 4070 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 5080 (16GB) fits 7 more of the indexed models than this card. RTX 5080 →

Common questions

What is the best local LLM for an RTX 4070 Ti?

For everyday use, Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct at Q4_K_M — about 5.5 GB of the card's 12 GB at 4K context, leaving 6.5 GB for a longer window. If you want the largest thing that will load, that is DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct at Q4_K_M (10.1 GB, 1.9 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 4070 Ti run InternLM2 20B Chat?

No. Its smallest build here, Q4_K_M, needs about 13.4 GB and this card has 12.0 GB usable — short by 1.4 GB before any context beyond 4K. The largest model this card does clear is DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct.

How many tokens per second does an RTX 4070 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 504 GB/s — a ceiling near 109 tok/s. Batch size, context length, the runtime and how much of the model sits in cache all take you below it.

RTX 4070 Ti or RTX 3080 Ti for local LLMs?

They hold the same models: 12 GB against 12 GB fits 56 and 56 of 110 respectively at 4K. The difference is throughput — 504 GB/s against 912 GB/s, a 1.8× gap in how fast the weights can be read, which is what token generation is bound by. The RTX 3080 Ti generates faster on any model both can hold.

56 of 110 indexed models fit comfortably in 12GB 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 2026-10-18 RSS → /feed.xml