What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super run for chat?

Build: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super + — + 32 GB RAM (windows)

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

Runs comfortably
92 models

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

#1Qwen 3 0.6B
0.6B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 2.4 GBHeadroom: 13.6 GBTTFT: instant
1321
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.30 GB
KV cache
0.30 GB
Activations
0.02 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~29 ms (instant)
#2Qwen 3 1.7B
1.7B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 3.6 GBHeadroom: 12.4 GBTTFT: instant
466
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.90 GB
KV cache
0.85 GB
Activations
0.05 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~83 ms (instant)
#3Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
3B
llama
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 6.9 GBHeadroom: 9.1 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run llama3.2:3b
150
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
3.40 GB
KV cache
1.50 GB
Activations
0.18 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~147 ms (fast)
#4TinyLlama 1.1B Chat v1.0
1.1B
llama
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 2.6 GBHeadroom: 13.4 GBTTFT: instant
720
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.60 GB
KV cache
0.14 GB
Activations
0.03 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~54 ms (instant)
#5Gemma 2 2B Instruct
2B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 4.0 GBHeadroom: 12.0 GBTTFT: instant
396
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.10 GB
KV cache
1.00 GB
Activations
0.06 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~98 ms (instant)
#6Kumru 2B
2.4B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 4.6 GBHeadroom: 11.4 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run alibayram/kumru:latest
330
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.50 GB
KV cache
1.20 GB
Activations
0.08 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~118 ms (fast)
#7Falcon 3 3B Instruct
3B
falcon
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 5.1 GBHeadroom: 10.9 GBTTFT: fast
264
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.70 GB
KV cache
1.50 GB
Activations
0.09 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~147 ms (fast)
#8Dolphin 3.0 Llama 3.2 3B
3B
dolphin
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 5.2 GBHeadroom: 10.8 GBTTFT: fast
264
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.80 GB
KV cache
1.50 GB
Activations
0.10 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~147 ms (fast)
#9Hermes 3 Llama 3.2 3B
3B
hermes
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 5.2 GBHeadroom: 10.8 GBTTFT: fast
264
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.80 GB
KV cache
1.50 GB
Activations
0.10 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~147 ms (fast)
#10Granite 3.0 2B Instruct
2B
granite
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 4,096VRAM: 3.9 GBHeadroom: 12.1 GBTTFT: instant
396
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.50 GB
KV cache
0.50 GB
Activations
0.08 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~98 ms (instant)
Quant: Q4_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 9.7 GBHeadroom: 6.3 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run brooqs/mistral-turkish-v2:latest
118
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.10 GB
KV cache
3.60 GB
Activations
0.21 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~353 ms (fast)
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 4,096VRAM: 7.6 GBHeadroom: 8.4 GBTTFT: fast
113
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
3.90 GB
KV cache
1.75 GB
Activations
0.20 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~343 ms (fast)

Runs with tradeoffs
62 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 GBTTFT: fast
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.2 GB headroom left for context growth
330
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.60 GB
KV cache
1.96 GB
Activations
0.43 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~118 ms (fast)
Gemma 2 9B Instruct
9B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 12.4 GBHeadroom: 3.6 GBTTFT: fast
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.6 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run gemma2:9b
88
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
5.80 GB
KV cache
4.50 GB
Activations
0.30 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~441 ms (fast)
Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct
12B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 15.7 GBHeadroom: 0.3 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.3 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run mistral-nemo:12b
66
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
7.50 GB
KV cache
6.00 GB
Activations
0.38 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~589 ms (noticeable)
Gemma 3 12B
12B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 15.5 GBHeadroom: 0.5 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.5 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run gemma3:12b
66
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
7.30 GB
KV cache
6.00 GB
Activations
0.37 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~589 ms (noticeable)
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 4,096VRAM: 12.4 GBHeadroom: 3.6 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.6 GB headroom left for context growth
66
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
7.20 GB
KV cache
3.00 GB
Activations
0.36 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~589 ms (noticeable)
Qwen 3 14B
14B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.4 GBHeadroom: 3.6 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.6 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen3:14b
57
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.40 GB
KV cache
1.75 GB
Activations
0.42 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~687 ms (noticeable)
Mistral Small 3 24B
24B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 28.5 GBHeadroom: 6.7 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~44% of layers run on CPU
ollama run mistral-small:24b
33
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
14.00 GB
KV cache
12.00 GB
Activations
0.71 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1177 ms (noticeable)
Mistral Small 3.2 24B
24B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 28.5 GBHeadroom: 6.7 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~44% of layers run on CPU
33
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
14.00 GB
KV cache
12.00 GB
Activations
0.71 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1177 ms (noticeable)

What if you upgraded?

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

+32 GB system RAM

Check the current price

Adds 32 GB to your CPU-offload working set. Helps when models don't quite fit in VRAM.

Unlocks: 5 new comfortable, 78 new tradeoff

  • • Gemma 3 270M
  • • SmolLM2 135M Instruct
  • • SmolLM2 360M Instruct
  • • VBART Large (Turkish Summarization)

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

Check the current price

22 GB VRAM (vs your 16 GB) plus a bandwidth jump from ~736 GB/s to ~616 GB/s.

Unlocks: 24 new comfortable

  • • Qwen 3 14B
  • • Gemma 3 270M
  • • Phi-4 14B
  • • Phi-4 Reasoning 14B

Add a second NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super

Launch MSRP $999 (2024). Check the current price.

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: 55 new comfortable

  • • Qwen 3 30B-A3B
  • • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
  • • Qwen 3 32B
  • • Gemma 4 31B Dense

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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.

—
DeepSeek V4 Flash (284B MoE)
284B
deepseek
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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