What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB run for long context?

Build: RTX 4060 Ti 16GB + Ryzen 5 7600 + 32GB DDR5

Memory: 16 GB VRAM + 32 GB system RAM
Runner: llama.cpp / Ollama (CUDA)

Runs comfortably
101 models

Ranked by fit for long context use case + predicted speed. Click a row for VRAM breakdown.

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 5.3 GBHeadroom: 10.7 GB
103
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.90 GB
KV cache
1.50 GB
Activations
0.10 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#2Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct
3.8B
phi
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 8.0 GBHeadroom: 8.0 GB
ollama run phi3.5:3.8b
46
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.10 GB
KV cache
1.90 GB
Activations
0.21 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#3Falcon Mamba 7B
7B
falcon
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.7 GBHeadroom: 6.3 GB
44
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.20 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.22 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#4Codestral Mamba 7B
7B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.7 GBHeadroom: 6.3 GB
44
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.20 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.22 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#5Gemma 4 E4B (Effective 4B)
4B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 8.4 GBHeadroom: 7.6 GB
ollama run gemma4:e4b
44
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
2.00 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#6Qwen 3 8B
8B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.8 GBHeadroom: 5.2 GB
ollama run qwen3:8b
39
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.80 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.25 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.4 GBHeadroom: 5.6 GB
39
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 11.1 GBHeadroom: 4.9 GB
39
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
5.00 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.26 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#9Qwen 2.5 7B Instruct
7B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 10.8 GBHeadroom: 5.2 GB
ollama run qwen2.5:7b
25
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.10 GB
KV cache
0.47 GB
Activations
0.41 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#10Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
8B
llama
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 11.8 GBHeadroom: 4.2 GB
ollama run llama3.1:8b
22
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.50 GB
KV cache
1.07 GB
Activations
0.43 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#11InternLM 2.5 7B Chat
7B
internlm
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.9 GBHeadroom: 6.1 GB
44
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
#12Turkish Mistral 7B Instruct v0.2
7B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.4 GBHeadroom: 6.6 GB
44
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
3.90 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.20 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB

Runs with tradeoffs
94 models

Tight VRAM, partial CPU offload, or context-limited.

DeepSeek V2 Lite Chat
15.7B
deepseek
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.8 GBHeadroom: 3.2 GB
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.2 GB headroom left for context growth
129
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.60 GB
KV cache
1.96 GB
Activations
0.43 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct
12B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 15.7 GBHeadroom: 0.3 GB
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.3 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run mistral-nemo:12b
26
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
7.50 GB
KV cache
6.00 GB
Activations
0.38 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Qwen 3 14B
14B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.4 GBHeadroom: 3.6 GB
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.6 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen3:14b
22
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.40 GB
KV cache
1.75 GB
Activations
0.42 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Qwen 2.5 14B Instruct
14B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.9 GBHeadroom: 3.1 GB
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.1 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen2.5:14b
22
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.90 GB
KV cache
1.75 GB
Activations
0.45 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE)
16B
deepseek
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 13.8 GBHeadroom: 2.2 GB
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.2 GB headroom left for context growth
129
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
9.50 GB
KV cache
2.00 GB
Activations
0.48 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Granite 3 MoE (3B active)
16B
granite
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 13.8 GBHeadroom: 2.2 GB
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.2 GB headroom left for context growth
103
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
9.50 GB
KV cache
2.00 GB
Activations
0.48 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Phi-4 14B
14B
phi
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.4 GBHeadroom: 3.6 GB
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.6 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run phi4:14b
22
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.40 GB
KV cache
1.75 GB
Activations
0.42 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Nemotron 3 Nano (30B-A3B)
30B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 24.5 GBHeadroom: 10.7 GB
  • Partial CPU offload: ~35% of layers run on CPU
  • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run nemotron3:nano
2
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
18.00 GB
KV cache
3.75 GB
Activations
0.90 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB

What if you upgraded?

Hypothetical scenarios. We re-ran the compatibility engine for each.

+32 GB system RAM

~$80–150

Doubles your CPU-offload working set. Helps when models don't quite fit in VRAM.

Unlocks: 41 new comfortable, 112 new tradeoff

  • Qwen 3 0.6B
  • Qwen 3 1.7B
  • Gemma 3 270M
  • SmolLM2 135M Instruct

Upgrade to NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti 22GB (China-mod)

~$350

22 GB VRAM (vs your 16 GB) plus a bandwidth jump from ~288 GB/s to ~616 GB/s.

Unlocks: 68 new comfortable

  • Qwen 3 0.6B
  • Gemma 4 12B
  • Qwen3.5 9B
  • Qwen 3 1.7B

Add a second NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB

~$449

Tensor parallelism splits the model across both cards, effectively doubling VRAM. Bandwidth doesn't double — runs ~1.5× the single-card speed in practice.

Unlocks: 115 new comfortable

  • Qwen 3 0.6B
  • Qwen 3 30B-A3B
  • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
  • Qwen3.6 27B

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Won't run
top 5 popular models

Need more memory than you have. Shown for orientation.

DeepSeek V4 Pro (1.6T MoE)
1600B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

Qwen 3.5 235B-A17B (MoE)
397B
qwen
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

Qwen 3 235B-A22B
235B
qwen
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

DeepSeek R1 (671B reasoning)
671B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

Llama 4 Scout
109B
llama
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

How to read these numbers

Measured here
Measured here - RunLocalAI ran this exact combo on owner hardware with public evidence.

Source-backed
Source-backed / community - a reproduced public source supports the speed, but it is not labeled as owner-measured.

Extrapolated
Extrapolated - predicted from a measured benchmark on similar-bandwidth hardware.

Estimated
Estimated - formula based on VRAM bandwidth and model architecture; not a benchmark row.

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