Can Yi 1.5 9B run on RTX 3050 8GB?

BARELY — Tight on Memory

C43Usable

○Estimated from fit model

Yi 1.5 9B needs ~9.0 GB VRAM. RTX 3050 8GB has 8.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~17 tok/s.

Runtime: OllamaCapacity: OffloadBandwidth: Very lowStack: BasicBottleneck: Host offload

Operating mode

Choose the run profile you care about

Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.

Current mode

Balanced

Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.

Capabilities:

Select quantization to explore

Q4_K_M (Medium quality) — 9.0 GB, 17.3 tok/s, Very compromised (needs ~0.6 GB host RAM)

9.0 GB required8.0 GB available

113% VRAM needed

1.0 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization

Fit status

Very compromised (needs ~0.6 GB host RAM)

Decode

17.3 tok/s

TTFT

11176 ms

Safe context

Memory

9.0 GB / 8.0 GB

Offload

10%

Memory breakdown

Weights5.5 GB

KV Cache1.5 GB

Runtime1.2 GB

Headroom0.8 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsYi 1.5 9B on RTX 3050 8GB
1st promptCold start — includes initialization
>What is local AI inference?
Local AI inference means running an AI language model directly on your own hardware — your laptop, desktop, or server — instead of sending requests to a remote cloud API.

When you run inference locally the model weights are loaded into your GPU or unified memory. Each token you generate requires reading those weights from memory, so memory bandwidth is the main bottleneck for decode speed.

Key benefits of running locally:
 - Full privacy: your prompts never leave your machine
 - No per-token cost or rate limits
 - Works offline once the model is downloaded
 - Latency depends only on your hardware
2nd promptWarm — model ready, no init overhead
>How much VRAM do I need?
It depends on the model size and quantization level. A rough rule of thumb:

 Model size Q4 (4-bit) Q8 (8-bit) FP16
 7B params ~4.3 GB ~7.5 GB ~14 GB
 13B params ~7.9 GB ~13.9 GB ~26 GB
 70B params ~42.7 GB ~74.9 GB ~140 GB

Most people use 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M) which gives 90-95% of full quality at a fraction of the memory. A 24 GB GPU can comfortably run most 7B-13B models.
Estimated: 17.3 tok/s decode · 11.2s TTFT (warm) · 43 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.

CPU or host-memory offload is active

About 10% of the working set spills out of accelerator memory, which usually hurts latency and sustained decode throughput.

Very little memory headroom

You can run the model, but there is not much room left for longer context, bigger batches, extra apps, or future model updates.

Best improvement path

Remove offload with more accelerator memory

Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.

Buy headroom, not only minimum fit

A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.

Increase host RAM if you keep offloading

This setup may need roughly 0.6 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	C	Runs with offload (needs ~0.1 GB host RAM)	20.7 tok/s	5094 ms	4K
Coding	C	Very compromised (needs ~0.6 GB host RAM)	17.3 tok/s	11176 ms	4K
Agentic Coding	F	Too heavy	12.6 tok/s	22362 ms	4K
Reasoning	C	Very compromised (needs ~0.6 GB host RAM)	17.3 tok/s	13208 ms	4K
RAG	F	Too heavy	12.6 tok/s	27952 ms

Quantization options

How Yi 1.5 9B (9B params) fits at each quantization level on RTX 3050 8GB (8.0 GB usable).

Quant	Bits	VRAM	Quality	Fit
Q2_K	2	3.5 GB	Low	B58
Q3_K_S	3	4.4 GB	Low	B58
NVFP4Best for your GPU

Get started

Copy-paste commands to run Yi 1.5 9B on your machine.

Run

lms load Yi-1.5-9B-Chat && lms server start

Upgrade options

Hardware that runs Yi 1.5 9B well

👁 NVIDIA
RTX 3060 12GBBudget pick

12 GB VRAM (+4)360 GB/s (+136)

Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.47.1 tok/s decode

Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.

Raises estimated decode speed by about 172%.

~$329 MSRP

👁 NVIDIA
RTX 5060 Ti 16GBBest value

16 GB VRAM (+8)448 GB/s (+224)

Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.55 tok/s decode

Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.

Raises estimated decode speed by about 218%.

~$449 MSRP

👁 NVIDIA
RTX 4060 Ti 16GBNVIDIA upgrade

16 GB VRAM (+8)288 GB/s (+64)

Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.41.6 tok/s decode

Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.

Raises estimated decode speed by about 140%.

~$499 MSRP

Frequently asked questions

See all results for RTX 3050 8GB See all hardware for Yi 1.5 9B

URL: https://willitrunai.com/can-run/yi-1.5-9b-on-rtx-3050-8gb

⇱

Can Yi 1.5 9B run on RTX 3050 8GB?

BARELY — Tight on Memory

Choose the run profile you care about

Memory breakdown

See how fast it feels

What limits this setup

Best improvement path

Performance by workload

Quantization options

Get started

Hardware that runs Yi 1.5 9B well

Frequently asked questions