Which model should you run?

A hand-picked shortlist by how much memory your GPU has — from an 8 GB laptop to a 128 GB DGX Spark — with the exact quant and offload that makes each one fit. Bigger models fit smaller boxes than you'd think: for an MoE, only a few billion params are active per token, so it runs with its experts in system RAM. New to quants? Read Quantization explained.

Numbers you can trust

We don't print guessed speeds here. When you load one of these, TurboLLM benchmarks it on your exact GPU and shows the real measured tokens/sec plus a VRAM-fit verdict — the one thing Ollama's and LM Studio's model lists can't tell you.

The quant & offload lever — and how auto-fit uses it

The size next to each model is the on-disk GGUF at a given quant, and it's a dial, not a fixed cost. Drop from Q4_K_M to Q3_K_M or an IQ3 and a 35B fits 16 GB; for a Mixture-of-Experts model, offload the idle experts to CPU RAM and only the active ~3B stay on the GPU. You don't have to work any of this out — TurboLLM's auto-fit picks the quant and the exact GPU/CPU split for your card, and the VRAM-fit verdict shows it before you load.

Filter
8 GB Laptops & entry GPUs (RTX 3060 / 4060, 8 GB Apple Silicon)

These run fully in VRAM at Q4. The newest flagships are bigger MoE models — with aggressive expert-offload even those can run here, but they shine on 16 GB+.

Qwen3 8B
by Alibaba · GGUF
Dense
toolsthinkingcode

A fast, capable dense all-rounder with a toggleable thinking mode — the sweet spot for a small card.

8 GB: Q4_K_M (5.0 GB) fully in VRAM · 128K context
unsloth/Qwen3-8B-GGUF
Gemma 4 E4B
by Google · GGUF
Dense · multimodal
visiontools

The vision pick for 8 GB — Google's newest small Gemma takes image input and still fits comfortably.

8 GB: Q4_K_M (~5 GB) in VRAM · 128K context
unsloth/gemma-4-E4B-it-GGUF
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B
by Alibaba · GGUF
Dense
codetools

Still the best dense coder that fits 8 GB fully — the newest coders are big MoE models that want 16 GB+.

8 GB: Q4_K_M (4.7 GB) in VRAM · 32K context
Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct-GGUF
Qwen3-Embedding 0.6B
by Alibaba · GGUF
Embedding
embedding

A tiny, top-tier multilingual embedding model for local RAG — costs almost no VRAM alongside a chat model. Served on /v1/embeddings.

8 GB: Q8_0 (~0.6 GB) — pairs with any chat model · 32K context
Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF
16 GB Mainstream GPUs (RTX 4070 Ti / 4080 / 5070 Ti, 16 GB Apple Silicon)

The sweet spot. A 27B dense fits in VRAM at Q3–IQ4; a 35B-A3B MoE runs at Q3 in-VRAM or Q4 with expert offload; even a huge coder MoE runs with its experts in system RAM.

Qwen3.6 35B-A3B
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · ~3B active
toolsthinkingcode

The fast MoE daily driver — only ~3B params active per token, so it stays quick even with experts spilled to CPU. This is the model behind our RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB benchmarks.

16 GB: Q3_K_M (16.6 GB) in VRAM, or Q4_K_M (22 GB) + expert offload · 256K context
unsloth/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-GGUF
Qwen3.6 27B
by Alibaba · GGUF
Dense
toolsthinkingcode

The dense sibling — a touch slower than the MoE but rock-solid quality, and it fits fully in VRAM at a mid quant.

16 GB: IQ4_XS (15.4 GB) or Q3_K_M (13.6 GB) in VRAM · Q4_K_M (16.8 GB) + light offload · 256K context
unsloth/Qwen3.6-27B-GGUF
Qwen3-Coder-Next
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · agentic coder
codetools

The newest agentic coding MoE. Its experts live in system RAM while attention and KV stay on the GPU, so it runs on a 16 GB card — TurboLLM's auto-fit sets the split.

16 GB: IQ2IQ3 with heavy CPU-expert offload (needs system RAM) · even better on 24 GB+ · large context
unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF
Qwen3-VL 8B
by Alibaba · GGUF
Dense · vision-language
visiontools

Current-gen vision-language model with strong OCR and spatial reasoning; a tiny footprint leaves lots of VRAM for images and context.

16 GB: Q4_K_M (5.0 GB) with plenty of headroom for images + context · 256K context
Qwen/Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-GGUF
24 GB+ Enthusiast GPUs (RTX 3090 / 4090 / 5090, 32 GB+ Apple Silicon)

Everything in the 16 GB tier runs here at a higher quant, longer context, or lighter offload — plus the bigger flagships below.

Qwen3.6 35B-A3B
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · ~3B active
toolsthinkingcode

The same daily driver, now fully in VRAM at Q4 — faster and higher quality than on a 16 GB card.

24 GB: Q4_K_M (22 GB) fully in VRAM with room for context, or Q5_K_M (26.5 GB) + light offload for max quality · 256K context
unsloth/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-GGUF
Qwen3-Coder-Next
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · agentic coder
codetools

More VRAM means a higher quant and a smaller offload footprint — the strongest local coder gets noticeably better here.

24 GB: IQ3IQ4_XS (28–38 GB) with lighter offload than 16 GB · large context
unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF
gpt-oss 120B
by OpenAI · GGUF
MoE · ~5B active
toolsthinkingcode

A frontier-class 120B reasoning MoE at native MXFP4. Keep attention and KV in VRAM, park the experts in system RAM, and it runs on a single 24 GB card.

24 GB: MXFP4 (~63 GB), experts offloaded to CPU RAM — auto-fit sets it up · 128K context
ggml-org/gpt-oss-120b-GGUF
Gemma 4 31B
by Google · GGUF
Dense · multimodal
visiontools

Google's dense multimodal flagship — image + text input and the stronger vision/OCR the Qwen picks lack.

24 GB: Q4_K_M (18.3 GB) fully in VRAM, or Q6_K (25.2 GB) + light offload · 256K context
unsloth/gemma-4-31B-it-GGUF
48 GB Workstation cards & dual-GPU (RTX 6000 Ada, 2×24 GB, 48–64 GB Apple Silicon)

Dense 70B models fit fully in VRAM, and the 100B-class MoEs start to open up at a low quant.

Llama 3.3 70B
by Meta · GGUF
Dense · 70B
tools

The classic dense 70B — excellent quality and the widest ecosystem support. Being dense, it likes memory bandwidth, so it's happiest on a discrete card.

48 GB: Q4_K_M (43 GB) fully in VRAM · IQ4_XS (38 GB) · 128K context
unsloth/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-GGUF
Qwen3-Coder-Next
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · agentic coder
codetools

The agentic coder at a proper quant — this is where it really comes into its own, with most of it resident instead of offloaded.

48 GB: Q4_K_M (48.5 GB) with a touch of offload, or Q3 fully in VRAM · large context
unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF
GLM-4.5-Air
by Z.ai · GGUF
MoE · 106B-A12B
toolsthinkingcode

A 106B-A12B MoE — the smallest way into GLM's agentic/coding tier. Fits 48 GB at a low quant; noticeably better on 128 GB.

48 GB: Q2_K_XL (47 GB) fits, or IQ3 (51 GB) + light offload · 128K context
unsloth/GLM-4.5-Air-GGUF
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · ~3B active
toolsthinkingcode

Your 16 GB daily driver, now at Q8 — near-lossless quality, fully resident, with headroom for a huge context.

48 GB: Q8_0 (37 GB) fully in VRAM · 256K context
unsloth/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-GGUF
128 GB DGX Spark (128 GB unified), high-end workstations, 128 GB Apple Silicon

DGX Spark's 128 GB is unified memory at modest bandwidth, so low-active-param MoE models are the sweet spot — they run huge and stay fast. Everything from the lower tiers also runs here at full quality with no offload (gpt-oss-120b, Qwen3-Coder-Next at Q8, …).

Qwen3-235B-A22B
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · 22B active
toolscode

The open-weight flagship — 235B total, 22B active. On a DGX Spark it runs at a usable quant with room to spare; genuine frontier quality, fully local.

128 GB: Q3_K_M (112 GB) or IQ4_XS (125 GB) · 256K context
unsloth/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507-GGUF
Qwen3-VL 235B-A22B
by Alibaba · GGUF
MoE · vision · 22B active
visiontoolscode

The vision flagship at the same scale — frontier multimodal reasoning and OCR, running entirely on your own hardware.

128 GB: Q3_K_M (112 GB) / IQ4_XS (125 GB) · vision + 256K context
unsloth/Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B-Instruct-GGUF
MiniMax M2.7
by MiniMax · GGUF
MoE · ~10B active
toolsthinkingcode

A fast agentic/coding MoE — only ~10B params active, so it stays brisk even on unified memory. A strong coding and tool-use choice at this scale.

128 GB: Q3_K_M (101 GB) / IQ4_XS (108 GB) · large context
unsloth/MiniMax-M2.7-GGUF
GLM-4.5-Air
by Z.ai · GGUF
MoE · 106B-A12B
toolsthinkingcode

The 106B GLM at Q8 — DGX Spark holds it entirely in memory for near-lossless agentic and coding quality.

128 GB: Q8_0 (117 GB) fully resident · or Q6_K (99 GB) · 128K context
unsloth/GLM-4.5-Air-GGUF
Beyond 128 GB

The very largest open MoEs — Qwen3-Coder-480B, DeepSeek-V3, Kimi-K2 — need roughly 192 GB+ even at a low quant. Two DGX Sparks linked over ConnectX give you 256 GB of unified memory, enough to run a 400B-class model locally.

A curated shortlist — the live catalog is in the app

Open-weight models move fast, so this page is a hand-picked starting point (refreshed mid-2026). Inside TurboLLM, Models → Browse Hugging Face is a live, sortable catalog of the entire Hub with a rendered model card, per-GPU quant recommendation, and resume + SHA-256 verified downloads. To add any model above: copy its repo id, then paste it into that in-app search.

Not sure which quant to pick?

Q4_K_M? IQ3_XXS? Q8_0? The naming is the most confusing part of local LLMs, and nobody explains it. We do.

Read: Quantization explained →