the honest answer to 'what GPU runs Llama 70B': not the one you were about to buy
Llama 70B needs about 40GB of VRAM to run well — and almost no single consumer card has it. Here's what actually works, visualized, with the…
Aliteq
Ravi Malhotra · Hardware Editor
The short answer
Llama 3.3 70B at Q4 needs ~40GB of VRAM to run entirely in memory, which no single consumer GPU provides. The practical options are dual GPUs (2× RTX 3090 or 2× RTX 4090 for 48GB combined), a…
2× RTX 3090 (48GB, ~$2,000 used): the cheapest way to run 70B in VRAM. ~15 tok/s measured on llama.cpp. Best VRAM-per-dollar.
2× RTX 4090 (48GB, ~$3,200): ~20–21 tok/s measured — the best performance-per-dollar path if you can source the cards.
Mac Studio M4 Max 128GB: runs 70B at Q6 around 20+ tok/s drawing ~60W — silent, efficient, one box.
Single RTX 5090 (32GB): only at aggressive Q3, compromising quality; it cannot hold Q4 in VRAM.
Renting a 48GB+ cloud GPU is often the smarter first move — no $2,000+ commitment to find out if you'll actually use it.
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the honest answer to 'what GPU runs Llama 70B': not the one you were about to buy