NVIDIA RTX 5070 vs NVIDIA RTX 3080
Which graphics card is better for running local language models? Here is how the NVIDIA RTX 5070 (12 GB) compares against the NVIDIA RTX 3080 (10 GB) in real memory headroom, supported model architectures, and generation speed.
NVIDIA RTX 5070
- Memory Bandwidth: 672 GB/s (GDDR7 192-bit)
- Fits fully in VRAM: 33 popular models
- Power Draw (TDP): 250W
- Largest recommended (Q4): 14B
NVIDIA RTX 3080
- Memory Bandwidth: 760 GB/s (GDDR6X 320-bit)
- Fits fully in VRAM: 29 popular models
- Power Draw (TDP): 320W
- Largest recommended (Q4): 8B
The AI Local Check Verdict: Which GPU should you buy for AI?
The Classic Headroom vs Speed Trade-off: The NVIDIA RTX 5070 has 2 GB more VRAM, allowing it to fit larger models that cannot run locally on the NVIDIA RTX 3080.
However, the NVIDIA RTX 3080 has a higher memory bandwidth (760 GB/s vs 672 GB/s). For models that comfortably fit in 10 GB VRAM, the NVIDIA RTX 3080 will generate tokens roughly 13.0% faster. Choose the NVIDIA RTX 5070 if you prioritize model size flexibility, or the NVIDIA RTX 3080 if you prioritize token generation speed on models up to 10 GB.
Models that fit on NVIDIA RTX 5070, but NOT on NVIDIA RTX 3080
These models run entirely in GPU VRAM on the NVIDIA RTX 5070, but require slow system RAM offload on the NVIDIA RTX 3080:
| Model | Size | Downloads | NVIDIA RTX 5070 | NVIDIA RTX 3080 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unsloth/gpt-oss-20b-GGUF | 20.91B | 615,143 | Fits in VRAM | Offload (Slow) |
| bartowski/Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct-GGUF | 32.76B | 596,743 | Fits in VRAM | Offload (Slow) |
| unsloth/flint-GGUF | 39.79B | 331,924 | Fits in VRAM | Offload (Slow) |
| bartowski/Nanbeige_Nanbeige4.3-33B-GGUF | 33.12B | 155,759 | Fits in VRAM | Offload (Slow) |