Best GPU for Qwen3-8B
The smallest memory budget in our catalog that runs Qwen3-8B cleanly at 8,192 tokens is 9 GiB net, with Q6_K (7.5 GiB–8.1 GiB total). Cards at that budget: GeForce RTX 3080 10GB. The largest file, BF16, is comfortable from 30 GiB net: GeForce RTX 5090 32GB.
Which card, by net memory
Rows start at the first budget where the smallest official file is at least tight and stop at the first where the largest file is comfortable. Devices in one row have the same net budget (capacity minus the catalog's default reserve), so they get the same verdict; choose between them on bandwidth, software support and price, which this page does not rank. llama.cpp, one sequence, fp16 KV cache, typical extras. Unified-memory devices use the reserve in their catalog record. "n/a" in the last column means the model's native window is shorter than 32,768 tokens.
Files this ranking uses
| File | Weights | Source repository |
|---|---|---|
| BF16 | 15.26 GiB (16,381,470,720 bytes) | Qwen/Qwen3-8B |
| Q8_0 | 8.11 GiB (8,709,518,112 bytes) | Qwen/Qwen3-8B-GGUF |
| Q6_K | 6.26 GiB (6,725,899,040 bytes) | Qwen/Qwen3-8B-GGUF |
| Q5_K_M | 5.45 GiB (5,851,112,224 bytes) | Qwen/Qwen3-8B-GGUF |
| Q4_K_M | 4.68 GiB (5,027,783,488 bytes) | Qwen/Qwen3-8B-GGUF |
Byte counts come from the repository file listings recorded on the model page. Memory estimates are formulas, not measurements on these cards. No speed figure is given: none was measured here.
Data sources
- Qwen3-8B model card
- config.json — revision b968826d9c46dd6066d109eabc6255188de91218
- safetensors index — metadata.total_size=16381470720
- Method and reserves — catalog dataset 2026-10-02.1; hardware capacities from vendor spec pages listed on each device page