What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 run for long context?

Build: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 + — + 32 GB RAM (windows)

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.

#1Qwen 3 8B
8B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.8 GBHeadroom: 5.2 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run qwen3:8b
129
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.80 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.25 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~366 ms (fast)
#2Gemma 4 E4B (Effective 4B)
4B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 8.4 GBHeadroom: 7.6 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run gemma4:e4b
147
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
2.00 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~183 ms (fast)
#3Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct
3.8B
phi
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 8.0 GBHeadroom: 8.0 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run phi3.5:3.8b
155
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.10 GB
KV cache
1.90 GB
Activations
0.21 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~174 ms (fast)
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.4 GBHeadroom: 5.6 GBTTFT: fast
129
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~366 ms (fast)
#5Falcon Mamba 7B
7B
falcon
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.7 GBHeadroom: 6.3 GBTTFT: fast
148
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.20 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.22 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~320 ms (fast)
#6Codestral Mamba 7B
7B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.7 GBHeadroom: 6.3 GBTTFT: fast
148
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.20 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.22 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~320 ms (fast)
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 5.3 GBHeadroom: 10.7 GBTTFT: fast
345
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
1.90 GB
KV cache
1.50 GB
Activations
0.10 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~137 ms (fast)
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 11.1 GBHeadroom: 4.9 GBTTFT: fast
129
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
5.00 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.26 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~366 ms (fast)
#9Qwen 2.5 7B Instruct
7B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 10.8 GBHeadroom: 5.2 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run qwen2.5:7b
84
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.10 GB
KV cache
0.47 GB
Activations
0.41 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~320 ms (fast)
#10Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
8B
llama
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 11.8 GBHeadroom: 4.2 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run llama3.1:8b
73
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.50 GB
KV cache
1.07 GB
Activations
0.43 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~366 ms (fast)
#11InternLM 2.5 7B Chat
7B
internlm
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.9 GBHeadroom: 6.1 GBTTFT: fast
148
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.40 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~320 ms (fast)
#12Turkish Mistral 7B Instruct v0.2
7B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.4 GBHeadroom: 6.6 GBTTFT: fast
148
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
3.90 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.20 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~320 ms (fast)

Runs with tradeoffs
94 models

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

Nemotron 3 Nano (30B-A3B)
30B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 24.5 GBHeadroom: 10.7 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • Partial CPU offload: ~35% of layers run on CPU
ollama run nemotron3:nano
34
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
18.00 GB
KV cache
3.75 GB
Activations
0.90 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1371 ms (noticeable)
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
86
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): ~549 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
74
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): ~640 ms (noticeable)
Qwen 2.5 14B Instruct
14B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.9 GBHeadroom: 3.1 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.1 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen2.5:14b
74
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.90 GB
KV cache
1.75 GB
Activations
0.45 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~640 ms (noticeable)
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
431
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): ~110 ms (fast)
Gemma 4 Turkish 26B (4B active)
26B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 29.8 GBHeadroom: 5.4 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • Partial CPU offload: ~46% of layers run on CPU
40
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
14.30 GB
KV cache
13.00 GB
Activations
0.72 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1189 ms (noticeable)
Gemma 3 27B
27B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 32.1 GBHeadroom: 3.1 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • Partial CPU offload: ~50% of layers run on CPU
ollama run gemma3:27b
38
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
16.00 GB
KV cache
13.50 GB
Activations
0.81 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1234 ms (noticeable)
Qwen 3 30B-A3B
30B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 24.5 GBHeadroom: 10.7 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • Partial CPU offload: ~35% of layers run on CPU
ollama run qwen3:30b
34
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
18.00 GB
KV cache
3.75 GB
Activations
0.90 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1371 ms (noticeable)

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 ~960 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 5080

~$1199

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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