What can AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT run for long context?
Build: RX 9070 XT + Ryzen 7 9700X + 32GB DDR5 (Linux/ROCm)
Runs comfortably97 models
Ranked by fit for long context use case + predicted speed. Click a row for VRAM breakdown.
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 5.5 GBHeadroom: 10.5 GB196tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 8.2 GBHeadroom: 7.8 GBollama run phi3.5:3.8b88tok/sEstimated
ollama run phi3.5:3.8bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.9 GBHeadroom: 6.1 GB84tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.9 GBHeadroom: 6.1 GB84tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 8.6 GBHeadroom: 7.4 GBollama run gemma4:e4b83tok/sEstimated
ollama run gemma4:e4bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 11.0 GBHeadroom: 5.0 GBollama run qwen3:8b73tok/sEstimated
ollama run qwen3:8bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.6 GBHeadroom: 5.4 GB73tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 11.3 GBHeadroom: 4.7 GB73tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 11.0 GBHeadroom: 5.0 GBollama run qwen2.5:7b48tok/sEstimated
ollama run qwen2.5:7bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.1 GBHeadroom: 5.9 GB84tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.6 GBHeadroom: 6.4 GB84tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q5_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 11.0 GBHeadroom: 5.0 GBollama run koezgen/malhajar-mistral-tur7b:latest72tok/sEstimated
ollama run koezgen/malhajar-mistral-tur7b:latestRuns with tradeoffs98 models
Tight VRAM, partial CPU offload, or context-limited.
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 15.9 GBHeadroom: 0.1 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.1 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run mistral-nemo:12b49tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.1 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run mistral-nemo:12bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.6 GBHeadroom: 3.4 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.4 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen3:14b42tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.4 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen3:14bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 13.1 GBHeadroom: 2.9 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.9 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen2.5:14b42tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.9 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen2.5:14bQuant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 12.0 GBHeadroom: 4.0 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 4.0 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run llama3.1:8b42tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 4.0 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run llama3.1:8bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 13.0 GBHeadroom: 3.0 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.0 GB headroom left for context growth
244tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.0 GB headroom left for context growth
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 12.6 GBHeadroom: 3.4 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.4 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run phi4:14b42tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 3.4 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run phi4:14bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 24.7 GBHeadroom: 10.5 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:nano4tok/sEstimated
- • Partial CPU offload: ~35% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run nemotron3:nanoQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 14.0 GBHeadroom: 2.0 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.0 GB headroom left for context growth
196tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.0 GB headroom left for context growth
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, 116 new tradeoff
- • Qwen 3 0.6B
- • Qwen 3 1.7B
- • Gemma 3 270M
- • SmolLM2 135M Instruct
Upgrade to AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
~$729
20 GB VRAM (vs your 16 GB) plus a bandwidth jump from ~644 GB/s to ~800 GB/s.
Unlocks: 63 new comfortable
- • Qwen 3 0.6B
- • Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
- • Gemma 4 12B
- • Qwen3.5 9B
Add a second AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
~$649
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: 118 new comfortable
- • Qwen 3 0.6B
- • Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
- • Qwen 3 30B-A3B
- • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
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Won't runtop 5 popular models
Need more memory than you have. Shown for orientation.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (16 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.
How to read these numbers
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