How much VRAM does Stable LM 2 12B Chat need?

About 8.3 GB at Q4_K_M with 4K of context and batch 1, rising to roughly 13.2 GB at 32K. That figure is weights plus KV cache plus a 10% activation buffer, calculated from the model's architecture rather than measured on a card.

Will Stable LM 2 12B Chat run on a 10GB GPU?

Yes — at Q4_K_M and 4K context it needs about 8.3 GB, which leaves 1.7 GB spare on a RTX 3080 10G. That is the smallest card in this index that clears it comfortably; 56 of 63 do.

Which quantization of Stable LM 2 12B Chat should I use?

Q4_K_M has the lowest published quality loss (3.2%), and Q4_K_M is the level most people run. All 2 levels in the index are Q4_K_M, AWQ INT4.

Stable LM 2 12B Chat

12B

Stability AI

⚠ Superseded · Prefer Falcon 3 10B Instruct

This index would suggest Falcon 3 10B Instruct instead today — longer context (4K → 32K tokens). The numbers below are still accurate; they are just for a model you probably should not start with. Compare the two →

Stability AI's 12B chat model. Solid general-purpose option for 16GB GPUs.

Consumer GPUMac / Apple Silicon

Max Context

Quant Variants

GGUF Q4_K_M

Best Quality

96.8%

Accuracy Retained

Calculate VRAM Hugging Face Compare

Quantization Variants

Per-quant VRAM, quality loss, and inference speed on RTX 4090

Measured = site benchmarks · Estimated = formula · Community = public reports

Format	Level	BPW	VRAM	PPL Loss	Speed	Source	Actions
GGUF	Q4_K_M	4.85	8.2 GB	3.2%	108 tok/s	Estimated	Calc HF
AWQ	INT4	4	7.2 GB	4.5%	142 tok/s	Estimated	Calc HF

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Running Stable LM 2 12B Chat locally

At Q4_K_M and 4K of context, Stable LM 2 12B Chat needs about 8.3 GB — 7.0 GB of weights, 0.63 GB of KV cache and a 0.8 GB activation buffer. The smallest card in this index that clears that comfortably is the RTX 3080 10G at 10 GB, and 56 of the 63 cards here do. These are calculated figures, not measurements: the estimate stops counting a card as comfortable at 88% of its VRAM, which is roughly the room a desktop session needs.

What longer context costs

Going from 4K to 32K adds about 4.37 GB, taking the total to 13.2 GB. Weights do not move with context — only the KV cache does, and it grows linearly, so this is the number to watch when planning for long documents. The model's native window is 4K; holding all of it at Q4_K_M would need about 8 GB.

Which build to download

This index tracks 2 formats for it — GGUF, AWQ — across 2 levels. Q4_K_M carries the lowest published perplexity loss at 3.2%. The fastest level measured here is AWQ INT4 at 142 tok/s on an RTX 4090, batch 1. GGUF runs on llama.cpp and Ollama across NVIDIA, AMD and Apple silicon; AWQ and GPTQ target vLLM on CUDA and ROCm; EXL2 is ExLlamaV2 and CUDA only.

Common questions

How much VRAM does Stable LM 2 12B Chat need?: About 8.3 GB at Q4_K_M with 4K of context and batch 1, rising to roughly 13.2 GB at 32K. That figure is weights plus KV cache plus a 10% activation buffer, calculated from the model's architecture rather than measured on a card.
Will Stable LM 2 12B Chat run on a 10GB GPU?: Yes — at Q4_K_M and 4K context it needs about 8.3 GB, which leaves 1.7 GB spare on a RTX 3080 10G. That is the smallest card in this index that clears it comfortably; 56 of 63 do.
Which quantization of Stable LM 2 12B Chat should I use?: Q4_K_M has the lowest published quality loss (3.2%), and Q4_K_M is the level most people run. All 2 levels in the index are Q4_K_M, AWQ INT4.

Where this model fits

Sized at Q4_K_M with a 4K context window, smallest card first. Comfortable means the estimate uses at most 88% of the memory.

Runs comfortably on: RTX 3080 10G10GB · +1.7 RTX 507012GB · +3.7 RTX 4070 Ti12GB · +3.7 RTX 4070 Super12GB · +3.7 RTX 407012GB · +3.7
Tight but possible: RTX 5060 Ti 8G8GB RTX 50608GB RTX 4060 Ti 8G8GB
Just misses: Mac M3 8G+2.3GB over
Ships in: GGUF AWQ
Compared here: GGUF vs AWQ
Try it yourself: Size it in the calculator Generate the run command

How to actually run this

Deployment guides for this model and this class of hardware.

This page's figures change when the model or the runtime does.Last updated 2026-09-21 RSS → /feed.xml