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URL: https://willitrunai.com/gpus/gtx-1070-8gb

⇱ AI Models for GTX 1070 8GB β€” What Runs on 8GB VRAM


NVIDIA

GTX 1070 8GB

GTX 10ConsumerPascalPCIe 3CUDA

Operating mode

Choose the operating mode for this hardware

Use this to bias workload recommendations toward responsiveness, background autonomy, lighter serving, or multi-GPU scale-out.

Current mode

Balanced

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

See Full AI Tier List for GTX 1070 8GB β†’

About this GPU for AI

The GTX 1070 8GB is a Pascal card with compute capability 6.1 and no Tensor Cores. Its 8 GB VRAM is enough for 7B models at Q4 via llama.cpp or Ollama, but all inference runs on CUDA cores without any accelerated INT8 path. Token generation is slow compared to any RTX-era GPU. Like all Pascal cards, it faces imminent CUDA deprecation with toolkit version 13.x. Useful as a free GPU you already own, but not worth purchasing for AI purposes.

Beyond LLMs

AI Capability Matrix

What AI tasks this GPU can handle β€” from text generation to image and video creation.

CapabilityStatusRepresentative ModelDetail
LLM Chat (7B)Runs nativelyLlama 3.1 8B Q4β€”
LLM Coding (30B)Won’t fitQwen 3 30B Q4β€”
LLM Large (70B)
legacy-but-capablelimited-vramcuda-deprecation-riskbudget-used-market

Specifications

Compute
FP1612 TFLOPS
INT846 TOPS
ArchitecturePascal
Memory
VRAM8 GB
Bandwidth256 GB/s
General
FamilyGTX 10
SegmentConsumer
InterconnectPCIe 3
Compute PlatformCUDA
MSRP$379

Key Features

CUDA Compute Capability 6.1 (Pascal) β€” no Tensor Cores256 GB/s memory bandwidth (GDDR5)8 GB GDDR5 VRAMPCIe Gen 3 x16CUDA deprecation incoming with 13.xNo INT8 or FP16 Tensor Core acceleration

For AI Workloads

Strengths
  • 8 GB VRAM runs 7B models at Q4 without CPU offloading
  • Still functional with llama.cpp and Ollama today
  • Very cheap used β€” one of the lowest-cost 8 GB options available
  • Adequate for occasional light inference tasks
Considerations
  • No Tensor Cores β€” inference is much slower than any RTX-era GPU at equivalent VRAM
  • Pascal loses CUDA toolkit support post-12.x β€” forward compatibility at risk
  • 256 GB/s bandwidth is low β€” slow token generation even for models that fit
  • Modern inference frameworks (vLLM, TGI) already don't support compute 6.1

Architecture

Pascal

Pascal is NVIDIA's first 16nm FinFET GPU architecture, powering the GTX 10-series consumer cards and Tesla P100/P40 datacenter accelerators. It introduced unified memory architecture and NVLink interconnect for datacenter GPUs.

AI Relevance

No dedicated Tensor Cores β€” all AI inference runs on standard CUDA cores at FP16 or FP32 precision. Still usable for small models (7B Q4) on cards with sufficient VRAM like the GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB) or P40 (24 GB), but significantly slower than Turing and newer.

Process: TSMC 16nmPlatform: CUDAPrecisions: FP32, FP16

Recommendations by Workload

Chat

S

Qwen 3.5 4B

Qwen 3.5 4B matches Chat and keeps a practical fit profile. It is a recent-generation family, which helps on current local SOTA workloads. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Context coverage stays within the requested workload envelope. Known distribution channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.

Decode 52.0 tok/s Β· 22K ctx Β· llama.cppEST.
6.1 GB / 8.0 GB VRAM

Coding

A

Codestral Mamba 7B

Codestral Mamba 7B is a specialized fit for Coding. It sits in the middle of the current generation mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Context coverage stays within the requested workload envelope. Known distribution channels: huggingface, ollama.

Decode 40.7 tok/s Β· 67K ctx Β· llama.cppEST.
6.5 GB / 8.0 GB VRAM

Agentic Coding

A

Full Model Compatibility

πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.5 4B
S95
4B6.3 GB56 tok/s28K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Microsoft
Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B
S92
3.8B5.5 GB53 tok/s43K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Jina AI
Jina Embeddings v3
A84

Just out of reach

Models you could run with an upgrade

High-quality models that need a bit more memory

Image & Video Generation

Diffusion Model Compatibility

21 of 52 models can generate images or video on your GTX 1070 8GB

ModelMax ResolutionGen TimeGrade
SD TurboImage512Γ—512~4.4sS
Stable Diffusion 1.5Image512Γ—768~8.8sS
Realistic Vision v5.1Image512Γ—768~8.8sS
DreamShaper 8Image512Γ—768~8.8sS
LCM DreamShaper v7

Upgrade paths

Upgrade from GTX 1070 8GB

See what you unlock with more powerful hardware

Upgrade options

Upgrade options

πŸ‘ NVIDIA
RTX 3080 10GBNext step up
10 GB VRAM (+2)760 GB/s (+504)
A
Unlocks 33 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.Unlocks Qwen 3 14B, Ministral 3 14B, Phi-4 14B+30 more Β· +98% faster avg

Unlocks 33 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.

Lifts average decode speed across fitting models by about 98%.

~$699 MSRP

πŸ‘ NVIDIA
RTX 2080 Ti 11GBNVIDIA upgrade
11 GB VRAM (+3)616 GB/s (+360)
A
Unlocks 34 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.Unlocks Qwen 3 14B, Phi-4-reasoning-plus 14B, Ministral 3 14B+31 more Β· +98% faster avg

Unlocks 34 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.

Lifts average decode speed across fitting models by about 98%.

~$999 MSRP

RX 7600 XT 16GBBest value
16 GB VRAM (+8)288 GB/s (+32)
A
Unlocks 74 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.Unlocks Magistral Small 2507, Devstral Small 2 24B Instruct, Qwen 3 14B+71 more

Unlocks 74 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.

~$329 MSRP

AMD Instinct MI350X 288GBBiggest leap
288 GB VRAM (+280)8000 GB/s (+7744)
B
Unlocks 155 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.Unlocks Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B Instruct, Qwen 3.5 397B A17B, Devstral 2 123B Instruct+152 more Β· +393% faster avg

Unlocks 155 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.

Lifts average decode speed across fitting models by about 393%.

~$8,000 MSRP

Frequently Asked Questions

Compare with similar

GTX 1070 8GB vs RTX 3050 8GBGTX 1070 8GB vs RTX 3060 Ti 8GBGTX 1070 8GB vs RTX 3070 8GB
Compare this GPUCompare with another GPU β†’
8
GB
VRAM
256GB/s
Bandwidth
12TFLOPS
FP16 Compute
46TOPS
INT8 Inference
$379 MSRP
GTX 1070 8GBCategory AvgRTX 3080 10GB
Won’t fit
Llama 3.1 70B Q4
β€”
Image Gen (SDXL)Runs with sequential offloadSDXL 1.0 FP16~~1m 33s per image
Image Gen (Flux)Won't fitFlux.1 Dev FP16~~2m 38s per image
Image Gen (SD 3.5)Won't fitSD 3.5 Large FP16~~3m 14s per image
Video Short (25f)Won't fitLTX Video 2B~~30.6s/frame
Video Long (100f)Won't fitWan Video 14B~~1m 30s/frame

Gemma 4 E2B

Gemma 4 E2B is a specialized fit for Agentic Coding. It is a recent-generation family, which helps on current local SOTA workloads. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Context coverage stays within the requested workload envelope. Known distribution channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.

Decode 40.0 tok/s Β· 96K ctx Β· llama.cppEST.
5.9 GB / 8.0 GB VRAM

Reasoning

A

Codestral Mamba 7B

Codestral Mamba 7B is viable for Reasoning, but is not the most specialized choice. It sits in the middle of the current generation mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Context coverage stays within the requested workload envelope. Known distribution channels: huggingface, ollama.

Decode 40.7 tok/s Β· 67K ctx Β· llama.cppEST.
6.5 GB / 8.0 GB VRAM

RAG

A

Granite 4.1 3B

Granite 4.1 3B matches RAG and keeps a practical fit profile. It sits in the middle of the current generation mix. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Context coverage stays within the requested workload envelope. Known distribution channels: huggingface, ollama.

Decode 42.0 tok/s Β· 59K ctx Β· llama.cppEST.
6.0 GB / 8.0 GB VRAM
0.57B4.8 GB8 tok/s8K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ BAAI
BGE M3
A81
0.57B4.0 GB8 tok/s8K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.5 9B
A80
9B9.4 GB15 tok/s6K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3 8B
A79
8B8.8 GB20 tok/s10K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ NVIDIA
Nemotron Nano 8B
A74
8B8.5 GB21 tok/s12K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B Instruct
F0
30.5B21.8 GB3 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.5 397B A17B
F0
397B246.7 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Mistral
Devstral 2 123B Instruct
F0
123B82.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Moonshot AI
Kimi K2.5
F0
1000B619.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Moonshot AI
Kimi K2.6
F0
1000B619.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
+1moe
πŸ‘ DeepSeek
DeepSeek V4 Pro
F0
1600B865.6 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.5 27B
F0
27B21.3 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.6 27B
F0
27B19.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
+1dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.5 122B A10B
F0
122B78.6 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen3-VL 30B A3B Instruct
F0
30B21.5 GB4 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.6 35B A3B
F0
35B27.2 GB3 tok/s4K ctx
+1moe
πŸ‘ DeepSeek
DeepSeek V4 Flash
F0
284B161.0 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3.5 35B A3B
F0
35B24.5 GB3 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Mistral
Magistral Small 2507
F0
24B18.8 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Mistral
Devstral Small 2 24B Instruct
F0
24B18.8 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3 32B
F0
32B25.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3 14B
F0
14B12.7 GB5 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3 30B A3B
F0
30.5B21.8 GB3 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Mistral
Mistral Small 4 119B
F0
119B79.7 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Cohere
Command A 111B
F0
111B73.3 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 2.5 VL 72B
F0
72B50.5 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ OpenAI
GPT-OSS 120B
F0
117B78.0 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ NVIDIA
Nemotron 3 Nano 30B
F0
30B22.4 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen3-Coder-Next
F0
80B52.0 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Microsoft
Phi-4-reasoning-plus 14B
F0
14.7B13.7 GB4 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Mistral
Devstral Small 1.1
F0
24B18.8 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Z.ai
GLM-5.1
F0
754B480.7 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Mistral AI
Pixtral Large 124B
F0
124B82.7 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Z.ai
GLM-5
F0
744B474.6 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ DeepSeek
DeepSeek V3.2
F0
671B411.5 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ OpenAI
GPT-OSS 20B
F0
21B17.0 GB4 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen 3 235B A22B
F0
235B147.9 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Alibaba
Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct
F0
480B297.4 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ NVIDIA
Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B
F0
30B22.9 GB4 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Google
Gemma 4 31B
F0
30.7B35.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
MiniMax M2.7
F0
230B145.8 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Mistral
Leanstral 119B A6B
F0
119B83.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ DeepSeek
DeepSeek Coder V2 236B
F0
236B204.3 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1 671B
F0
671B470.6 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ DeepSeek
DeepSeek V3.1 671B
F0
671B470.6 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
moe
πŸ‘ Mistral
Ministral 3 14B
F0
14B12.7 GB5 tok/s4K ctx
multimodal
πŸ‘ LG AI
EXAONE 4.0 32B
F0
32B25.1 GB2 tok/s4K ctx
dense
πŸ‘ Google
Gemma 4 26B A4B
F0
25.2B20.7 GB4 tok/s4K ctx
moe
Image
512Γ—768
~2.6s
S
PixArt-SigmaImage256Γ—256~35.2sS
FramePack I2VVideo256Γ—256~1m 5s/frameA
SDXL TurboImage256Γ—256~11.7sA
SDXL LightningImage256Γ—256~35sB
Stable Diffusion XL 1.0Image256Γ—256~1m 33sB
Playground v2.5Image256Γ—256~52.8sB
RealVisXL v5.0Image256Γ—256~1m 45sB
DreamShaper XLImage256Γ—256~1m 45sB
Juggernaut XL v9Image256Γ—256~1m 45sB
Animagine XL 3.1Image256Γ—256~1m 45sB
Pony Diffusion V6 XLImage256Γ—256~1m 45sB
Animagine XL 4.0Image256Γ—256~1m 45sB
Illustrious XLImage256Γ—256~1m 45sB
Wan Video 2.1 1.3BVideo256Γ—256~25.7s/frameD
Stable Diffusion 3.5 MediumImage256Γ—256~1m 2sD
Flux.2 Klein 4BImage256Γ—256~10.6sD
LTX Video 2BVideo256Γ—256~30.6s/frameF
KolorsImage256Γ—256~1m 10sF
Stable CascadeImage256Γ—256~1m 28sF
AuraFlow v0.3Image256Γ—256~2m 38sF
Stable Diffusion 3.5 LargeImage256Γ—256~3m 14sF
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large TurboImage256Γ—256~35.2sF
CogVideoX 2BVideo256Γ—256~30.6s/frameF
HunyuanVideoVideo256Γ—256~1m 5s/frameF
ChromaImage256Γ—256~35.2sF
Z-Image TurboImage256Γ—256~36.3sF
Flux.1 DevImage256Γ—256~2m 38sF
Flux.1 SchnellImage256Γ—256~30.8sF
LTX Video 13BVideo256Γ—256~1m 5s/frameF
Flux.1 Kontext DevImage256Γ—256~2m 56sF
AnimateDiff v1.5.3Video512Γ—768~16.1s/frameF
Cosmos Diffusion 7BVideo256Γ—256~50.5s/frameF
CogVideoX 5BVideo256Γ—256~44.1s/frameF
Wan2.2 TI2V 5BVideo256Γ—256~44.1s/frameF
Flux.2 Klein 9BImage256Γ—256~17.6sF
Flux.1 Fill DevImage256Γ—256~2m 30sF
Mochi 1 PreviewVideo256Γ—256~58.2s/frameF
HunyuanVideo 1.5Video256Γ—256~54s/frameF
Helios 14BVideo256Γ—256~1m 7s/frameF
SkyReels V2 14BVideo256Γ—256~1m 7s/frameF
Wan Video 2.1 14BVideo256Γ—256~1m 7s/frameF
Wan Video 2.2 14BVideo256Γ—256~1m 7s/frameF
Qwen ImageImage256Γ—256~59.3sF
Qwen Image EditImage256Γ—256~59.3sF
Flux.2 DevImage256Γ—256~27m 46sF
MAGI-1Video256Γ—256~1m 23s/frameF
HunyuanImage 3.0Image256Γ—256~1m 44sF

Image models estimated at 1024Γ—1024 (28 steps, FP16). Video models estimated at 768Γ—512 (25 frames, 30 steps, FP16). Actual performance varies with runtime and system load.

There are 4 upgrade path(s) from GTX 1070 8GB: RTX 3080 10GB, RTX 2080 Ti 11GB. Upgrading would unlock larger models and faster inference speeds.

Buying advice

Should you buy GTX 1070 8GB for local AI?

Usable for local AI with limits

Can run 7 of 50 top models, mostly smaller ones. Larger models need heavy quantization or won't fit.

8.0 GB

VRAM

$379

MSRP

$47/GB

Cost per GB VRAM

Best models for this GPU

What will limit you first

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.

Older PCIe generation

PCIe 3.0 is workable, but it compounds the penalty when you offload heavily or try to scale across multiple cards.

Best upgrade itinerary

Unlocks 33 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.

Want more headroom? RTX 3080 10GB (10.0 GB VRAM) is the next step up.