Can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 run Llama 3.1 8B?
8B parameter LLM model on 12GB GDDR6X
VRAM Requirements
Llama 3.1 8B is a 8B parameter model. At full precision (FP16), it requires 16GB of VRAM. Your NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 has 12GB, so you'll need to quantize it to 8-bit (Q8) to fit.
Maximum quality, no quantization
Near-lossless, ~50% size reduction
Good quality, ~75% size reduction
Recommended system RAM: 32GB DDR5 (2x GPU VRAM minimum for model overflow)
What This Means in Practice
Running Llama 3.1 8B at 8-bit quantization on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 gives you virtually identical quality to full precision while using roughly half the VRAM. Most users cannot distinguish Q8 output from FP16. This is the recommended precision for daily use — it's the best balance of quality and resource usage.
How to Set It Up
Step 1: Install Ollama
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | shOllama is the easiest way to run local LLMs. Works on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Step 2: Download and run Llama 3.1 8B
ollama run llama3.1:8bThis downloads the model (~8GB). First run takes a few minutes.
Step 3: Verify GPU is being used
nvidia-smiCheck that VRAM usage increases when the model loads. You should see ~8GB used.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Specs
Other GPUs That Run Llama 3.1 8B
Other LLM Models on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
About Llama 3.1 8B
Great entry point. Runs well on 8GB+ GPUs at Q4.