Can RTX 5070 12GB run Qwen3-1.7B?

NVIDIA · 12 GB GDDR7 · 672 GB/s bandwidth · Alibaba · 2.0B · model ctx up to 40K

Yes — the RTX 5070 12GB (12 GB GDDR7) can run Qwen3-1.7B. At Q4 with the default 8K context it needs ≈ 2.5 GB VRAM (weights 1.1 GB + KV cache 0.4 GB + 1 GB runtime overhead), which fits within 12 GB. Decode at Q4/8K: ≈ 213.8 tok/s (estimated, batch 1). FP16 (≈ 5.4 GB) also fits, at ≈ 58.8 tok/s (estimated). Estimates come from memory-bandwidth math; rows tagged measured override estimates. Relative ranking is more reliable than absolute tok/s. Methodology.

Fit & speed by quant and context

Quant	Context	VRAM needed	Fits?	tok/s (decode)
Q4	4K	2.3 GB	Yes	213.8 est.
Q4	8K default	2.5 GB	Yes	213.8 est.
Q4	32K	3.7 GB	Yes	213.8 est.
FP16	4K	5.2 GB	Yes	58.8 est.
FP16	8K default	5.4 GB	Yes	58.8 est.
FP16	32K	6.6 GB	Yes	58.8 est.

Fits = weights + KV(ctx) + 1 GB overhead ≤ 95% of VRAM. Measured anchors are context-agnostic; the fit verdict is recomputed per context. A missing tok/s means the model is far beyond this card (offload-only territory).

VRAM breakdown at 8K context

Quant	Weights	KV cache	Overhead	Total needed	RTX 5070 12GB VRAM
Q4	1.1 GB	0.4 GB	1 GB	2.5 GB	12 GB
FP16	4.0 GB	0.4 GB	1 GB	5.4 GB	12 GB

Other GPUs that run Qwen3-1.7B

• B200 192GB SXM — ≈2545.5 tok/s Q4 est.
• MI300X 192GB — ≈1686.4 tok/s Q4 est.
• H200 141GB SXM5 — ≈1527.3 tok/s Q4 est.
• H100 80GB SXM5 — ≈1065.9 tok/s Q4 est.
• Gaudi 3 128GB — ≈1042.4 tok/s Q4 est.
• A100 80GB SXM4 — ≈648.8 tok/s Q4 est.
• RTX 5090 32GB — ≈570.2 tok/s Q4 est.
• RTX 4090 24GB — ≈320.7 tok/s Q4 est.

All GPUs for Qwen3-1.7B →

Other models for the RTX 5070 12GB

• Qwen3-0.6B — ≈534.5 tok/s Q4 est.
• gemma-3-1b-it — ≈427.6 tok/s Q4 est.
• Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct — ≈356.4 tok/s Q4 est.
• Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct — ≈133.6 tok/s Q4 est.
• Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3 — ≈120.5 tok/s Q4 measured
• Phi-4-mini-instruct — ≈112.5 tok/s Q4 est.
• Phi-4-mini-reasoning — ≈112.5 tok/s Q4 est.
• gemma-3-4b-it — ≈109.7 tok/s Q4 est.

All models on the RTX 5070 12GB →