What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 run for chat?

Build: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 + — + 32 GB RAM (windows)

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

Runs comfortably
123 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: 29.6 GBTTFT: instant
3215
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): ~12 ms (instant)
Model details →
#2Qwen 3 8B
8B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 14.4 GBHeadroom: 17.6 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run qwen3:8b
137
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.20 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.42 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~164 ms (fast)
Model details →
#3Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
3B
llama
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 6.9 GBHeadroom: 25.1 GBTTFT: instant
ollama run llama3.2:3b
365
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): ~61 ms (instant)
Model details →
#4Qwen 3 1.7B
1.7B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 3.6 GBHeadroom: 28.4 GBTTFT: instant
1135
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): ~35 ms (instant)
Model details →
#5TinyLlama 1.1B Chat v1.0
1.1B
llama
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 2.6 GBHeadroom: 29.4 GBTTFT: instant
1754
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): ~23 ms (instant)
Model details →
#6Gemma 2 2B Instruct
2B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 4.0 GBHeadroom: 28.0 GBTTFT: instant
965
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): ~41 ms (instant)
Model details →
#7Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3
7B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q5_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.7 GBHeadroom: 21.3 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run mistral:7b
242
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
5.10 GB
KV cache
3.50 GB
Activations
0.26 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~143 ms (fast)
Model details →
#8Gemma 2 9B Instruct
9B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 16.6 GBHeadroom: 15.4 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run gemma2:9b
122
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
9.80 GB
KV cache
4.50 GB
Activations
0.50 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~184 ms (fast)
Model details →
#9DeepSeek V2 Lite Chat
15.7B
deepseek
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 18.7 GBHeadroom: 13.3 GBTTFT: instant
804
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.60 GB
KV cache
7.85 GB
Activations
0.44 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~49 ms (instant)
Model details →
#10Trendyol LLM 7B Chat v0.1
7B
llama
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 4,096VRAM: 7.6 GBHeadroom: 24.4 GBTTFT: fast
276
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): ~143 ms (fast)
Model details →
#11Kumru 2B
2.4B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 4.6 GBHeadroom: 27.4 GBTTFT: instant
ollama run alibayram/kumru:latest
804
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): ~49 ms (instant)
Model details →
#12Turkcell LLM 7B v1
7.4B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.2 GBHeadroom: 21.8 GBTTFT: fast
ollama run RefinedNeuro/Turkcell-LLM-7b-v1:latest
261
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.50 GB
KV cache
3.70 GB
Activations
0.23 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~152 ms (fast)
Model details →

Runs with tradeoffs
9 models

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

Mistral Small 3 24B
24B
mistral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 28.5 GBHeadroom: 3.5 GBTTFT: fast
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.5 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run mistral-small:24b
80
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): ~492 ms (fast)
Model details →
Mixtral 8x7B Instruct
47B
mixtral
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 37.1 GBHeadroom: 14.1 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~14% of layers run on CPU
ollama run mixtral:8x7b
41
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
28.00 GB
KV cache
5.88 GB
Activations
1.40 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~963 ms (noticeable)
Model details →
Jamba 1.5 Mini
52B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 39.8 GBHeadroom: 11.4 GBTTFT: fast
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~20% of layers run on CPU
161
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
30.00 GB
KV cache
6.50 GB
Activations
1.50 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~246 ms (fast)
Model details →
Dolphin 3.0 Mistral 24B
24B
dolphin
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 28.5 GBHeadroom: 3.5 GBTTFT: fast
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.5 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run dolphin-mistral:24b
80
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): ~492 ms (fast)
Model details →
Gemma 4 Turkish 26B (4B active)
26B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 29.8 GBHeadroom: 2.2 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.2 GB headroom left for context growth
74
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): ~532 ms (noticeable)
Model details →
InternVL 2.5 26B
26B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 31.6 GBHeadroom: 0.4 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.4 GB headroom left for context growth
74
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
16.00 GB
KV cache
13.00 GB
Activations
0.81 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~532 ms (noticeable)
Model details →
Command R 35B
35B
command-r
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 28.2 GBHeadroom: 3.8 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.8 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run command-r:35b
55
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
21.00 GB
KV cache
4.38 GB
Activations
1.05 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~717 ms (noticeable)
Model details →
Aya 23 35B
35B
other
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 28.2 GBHeadroom: 3.8 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.8 GB headroom left for context growth
55
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
21.00 GB
KV cache
4.38 GB
Activations
1.05 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~717 ms (noticeable)
Model details →

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, 22 new tradeoff

  • • Gemma 3 270M
  • • SmolLM2 135M Instruct
  • • SmolLM2 360M Instruct
  • • VBART Large (Turkish Summarization)
Shop this upgrade↗

Upgrade to NVIDIA A100 40GB

Launch MSRP $11,000 (2020). Check the current price.

40 GB VRAM (vs your 32 GB) plus a bandwidth jump from ~1792 GB/s to ~? GB/s.

Unlocks: 11 new comfortable

  • • Gemma 3 270M
  • • Mistral Small 3 24B
  • • SmolLM2 135M Instruct
  • • Dolphin 3.0 Mistral 24B
Shop this upgrade↗

Add a second NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

Launch MSRP $1,999 (2025). 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: 23 new comfortable

  • • Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
  • • DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 70B
  • • Gemma 3 270M
  • • Mistral Small 3 24B
Shop this upgrade↗

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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 (32 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 (32 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 (32 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 (32 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 (32 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

—
Cloud GPU rental

Not enough VRAM for these models? Rent a GPU by the hour

The models above need more memory than 32 GB VRAM + 32 GB system RAM. You can rent a GPU with enough VRAM by the hour to run one of them, or to test it before you buy hardware. For daily use, owning a card usually costs less over time.

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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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