The best local AI on a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 · 32GB VRAM right now is DeepSeek-R1 (distill) (32B @ Q3_K_M, ~45–70 tok/s). Full ranking below — capability × real speed on this hardware, never sponsored.
| # | model | best fit | verdict | speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DeepSeek-R1 (distill) | 32B Q3_K_M | ✅ Runs comfortably | 45–70 tok/s |
| 2 | Qwen2.5 | 32B Q3_K_M | ✅ Runs comfortably | 45–70 tok/s |
| 3 | Qwen3 | 32B Q3_K_M | ✅ Runs comfortably | 45–70 tok/s |
| 4 | Llama 3.1 | 70B Q2_K | ✅ Runs (tight) | 25–40 tok/s |
| 5 | Gemma 3 | 27B Q3_K_M | ✅ Runs comfortably | 45–75 tok/s |
| 6 | Llama 3.3 | 70B Q2_K | ✅ Runs (tight) | 25–40 tok/s |
| 7 | Mistral Small 3 | 24B Q5_K_M | ✅ Runs comfortably | 45–70 tok/s |
| 8 | Gemma 2 | 27B Q4_K_M | ✅ Runs comfortably | 40–65 tok/s |
| 9 | Gemma 4 | 12B Q8_0 | ✅ Runs comfortably | 50–80 tok/s |
| 10 | Mixtral 8x7B | 8x7B (MoE) Q4_K_M | ✅ Runs (tight) | 85–140 tok/s |
| 11 | Yi 1.5 | 34B Q3_K_M | ✅ Runs comfortably | 40–70 tok/s |
| 12 | Phi-4 | 14B Q8_0 | ✅ Runs comfortably | 45–75 tok/s |
Rankings use the same GQA-aware fit + bandwidth-calibrated speed math as the CLI — no sponsorships, no affiliate re-sorting, ever.
Different machine? Apple M1 · 8GB · Apple M1 Pro · 16GB · Apple M2 · 16GB · Apple M3 Pro · 18GB · Apple M2 Pro · 32GB · Apple M4 Pro · 48GB
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