NVIDIA
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 32GB
Curated Aggregate·2025-03-1832GB • $2.0k
Measured speed
92.0 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B
Device score
9.3 / 10
Reference tier
Enough headroom for a clean native Q4 run with room for context and runtime overhead.
External quality + local proof + buy path
Choose the model frontier.Buy the GPU that actually earns it.
OpenEvals tells us which open models are worth caring about. Our benchmark database and local-lab sweeps tell us which GPUs actually deserve your money.
Open model shortlist
12
Pulled from the current OpenEvals snapshot.
Tested GPUs
54
Benchmark-backed devices across consumer, pro, datacenter, and Apple silicon.
Local-lab sweeps
1
Real machine-generated evidence, not brochure copy.
Snapshot freshness
May 28, 2026
External quality layer generation date.
1. Pick an external target model
High-quality local open models
2. How we translate model quality into hardware picks
microsoft/Phi-3-medium-4k-instruct
We use external evals for model quality, estimate Q4 VRAM from parameter size, then rank GPUs with measured local throughput on the nearest tested workload class.
OpenEvals score
91.0
1 covered tasks
Estimated Q4 VRAM
8.4 GB
Approximate fit estimate
Proxy benchmark
Qwen 2.5 14B
14B-class proxy for serious coding and assistant workloads on 16GB-to-24GB cards.
LiveBench match
No direct match
Frontier references still shown below
Trust line
Fit is inferred from parameter size. Speed and device ranking come from measured local benchmark rows. Where a recommendation card shows a local-lab sweep, that data was ingested from a real machine run, not a public aggregate.
3. Buying lane
4. Ranking mode
Best overall path
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 12GB
The strongest blend of fit confidence, measured speed, and device trust.
strong fit165 tok/s
Best value path
Intel Arc B580 12GB
The price-to-throughput winner among cards we would still actually recommend.
strong fit86 tok/s
Cheapest real entry
Intel Arc B580 12GB
The lowest-cost benchmark-backed starting point that still clears the fit filter.
strong fit86 tok/s
Recommended hardware
Best GPUs for microsoft/Phi-3-medium-4k-instruct
These cards combine inferred model fit with measured local throughput. Proxy workload: Qwen 2.5 14B. Any buy button below preserves your `fredoline-20` Amazon affiliate tag.
ideal fit
NVIDIA
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB
Curated Aggregate·2024-04-2312GB • $799
Measured speed
165 tok/s
Nearest available measured LLM workload
Device score
8.4 / 10
Flagship tier
Likely native fit with a practical margin instead of a knife-edge configuration.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
Curated Aggregate·2025-07-0424GB • $1.6k
Measured speed
68.0 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B
Device score
9.1 / 10
Reference tier
Enough headroom for a clean native Q4 run with room for context and runtime overhead.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 12GB
Curated Aggregate·2026-03-1612GB • $549
Measured speed
165 tok/s
Nearest available measured LLM workload
Device score
8.7 / 10
Flagship tier
Likely native fit with a practical margin instead of a knife-edge configuration.
NVIDIA
2× NVIDIA RTX 4090 24GB
Curated Aggregate·2024-09-2148GB • $3.2k
Measured speed
92.0 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B
Device score
8.5 / 10
Flagship tier
Enough headroom for a clean native Q4 run with room for context and runtime overhead.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16GB
Curated Aggregate·2026-02-2216GB • $999
Measured speed
82.0 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B
Device score
9.1 / 10
Reference tier
Likely native fit with a practical margin instead of a knife-edge configuration.
Local-lab sweep available
alibayram/kumru:latest: 429.62 tok/s mean on this exact machine ingest.
AMD
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB
Curated Aggregate·2024-11-2748GB • $999
Measured speed
48.0 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B
Device score
9.0 / 10
Reference tier
Enough headroom for a clean native Q4 run with room for context and runtime overhead.
NVIDIA
4× NVIDIA RTX 3090 24GB
Curated Aggregate·2024-08-2596GB • $4.0k
Measured speed
78.0 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B
Device score
8.2 / 10
Enthusiast tier
Enough headroom for a clean native Q4 run with room for context and runtime overhead.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB
Curated Aggregate·2025-03-0824GB • $1.5k
Measured speed
55.0 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B
Device score
8.6 / 10
Flagship tier
Enough headroom for a clean native Q4 run with room for context and runtime overhead.
Public trust layer
Freshness, sources, and confidence
`OpenEvals` drives the open-model shortlist, `LM Arena` shows the broader community preference frontier, and `LiveBench` adds a live task-performance reference. We do not pretend those hosted snapshots are the same thing as local hardware proof.
Local speed comes from our benchmark rows and local-lab sweeps. If a model page says `proxy benchmark`, that means the exact model was not benchmarked locally yet and we mapped it to the nearest tested size class.
Real local-lab evidence
Machine-run proof, not just scraped lore
Verified ingest
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16GB
ollama-local-api • May 28, 2026
local sweep
Batch=1, 2048 context, 512 generated tokens, consecutive warm-model runs. Generation TPS uses Ollama eval_count/eval_duration.
alibayram/kumru:latest
2.4B • Q4_K_M
429.62 tok/s mean
brooqs/mistral-turkish-v2:latest
7.2B • Q4_0
160.83 tok/s mean
Current ingest includes your RTX 5080 local sweep. As new verified runs land, this section can become the strongest trust moat on the entire site.
What to do next
Move from this recommendation to deeper evidence
Compare specific cards, inspect the benchmark tables, or jump into the builder if you are balancing a full workstation instead of a standalone GPU buy.