local intelligence

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Best local LLMs for the AMD Radeon RX 590 / 590 GME 8GB

8GB · Polaris (GCN 4)

No direct published LLM bench found (localmaxxing has no RX 590 entry; r/LocalLLaMA has no isolated 590 numbers) — nearest silicon is RX 580 8GB (same 2304 SPs, same 256-bit/8Gbps memory, ~5-10% lower clocks), so expect RX 580-class Vulkan tok/s: ~8-15 on 7B Q4_K_M — marked as inference from sibling silicon, not measured Pre-RDNA Polaris (gfx803): no ROCm — Vulkan/llama.cpp only RX 590 GME is a 2020 China-market rebrand on 14nm Polaris 20 XTX (essentially an overclocked RX 580), NOT the 12nm Polaris 30 of the real RX 590 — check die/clocks before paying 590 prices 225W TDP (real 590) — needs 8-pin + often 6-pin PCIe power and a solid PSU; runs hot in small cases Some Sapphire Nitro+ SE SKUs ship faster 8.4Gbps memory (268.8 GB/s); base spec is 256.0 GB/s

explore the full catalogupgrade paths with live prices · what fits on each machine

Speed

computed band 4.0-10.0 tok/s for 8B Q4_K_M (roofline, 256.0 GB/s)

Effective decode window: 0.08–0.21 of 256 GB/s nominal → ~20–54 GB/s effective (llama.cpp decode, Q4_K_M basis; arch window, community-calibrated)

What fits (computed)

13b-q4 no 11.5 GB vs 8 GB usable — does not fit

14b-q4 offload-partial 9.7 GB vs 8 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

3b-q4 full 2.8 GB needed of 8 GB usable — headroom for context

4b-q4 full 3.7 GB needed of 8 GB usable — headroom for context

8b-q4 full 6.1 GB needed of 8 GB usable — headroom for context

Cited community benches

no single-card bench published — band is computed (see notes)

Runs fully in memory (machine alternatives)

Nominal bandwidth: 256.0 GB/s — see the effective decode window above

qwen3:0.6b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 0.6B · 0.6GB · needs ~1GB (4k ctx)

qwen3:1.7b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 1.7B · 1.4GB · needs ~1.8GB (4k ctx)

qwen3:4b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 4B · 2.6GB · needs ~3.2GB (4k ctx)

llama3.2:1b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 1B · 1.3GB · needs ~1.4GB (4k ctx)

llama3.2:3b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 3B · 2.0GB · needs ~2.4GB (4k ctx)

gemma3:1b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 1B · 1.0GB · needs ~1.1GB (4k ctx)

phi4:mini on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) mini 3.8B · 2.5GB · needs ~3GB (4k ctx)

moondream:2b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 2B · 1.7GB · needs ~3.7GB (4k ctx)

whisper:tiny on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) tiny · 0.1GB · needs ~2.1GB (4k ctx)

whisper on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) base · 0.3GB · needs ~2.3GB (4k ctx)

whisper:small on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) small · 0.9GB · needs ~2.9GB (4k ctx)

whisper:medium on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) medium · 3.1GB · needs ~5.1GB (4k ctx)

kokoro:82m on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 82M · 0.3GB · needs ~2.3GB (4k ctx)

gemma3:4b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 4B · 3.3GB · needs ~3.8GB (4k ctx)

deepseek-r1:7b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) distill 7B · 4.7GB · needs ~4.9GB (4k ctx)

mistral:7b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 7B · 4.1GB · needs ~4.6GB (4k ctx)

llava:7b on Raspberry Pi 5 + AI Kit (Hailo-8L) ($110) 7B · 4.7GB · needs ~6.7GB (4k ctx)

qwen3:8b on Tesla P100 (16GB, used) ($135) 8B · 5.2GB · needs ~5.8GB (4k ctx)

qwen2.5vl:7b on Tesla P100 (16GB, used) ($135) 7B · 5.6GB · needs ~5.8GB (4k ctx)

llama3.1:8b on Tesla P100 (16GB, used) ($135) 8B · 4.9GB · needs ~5.4GB (4k ctx)

deepseek-r1:8b on Tesla P100 (16GB, used) ($135) distill 8B · 4.9GB · needs ~5.4GB (4k ctx)

mistral-nemo:12b on Tesla P100 (16GB, used) ($135) 12B · 7.1GB · needs ~7.7GB (4k ctx)

Borderline — runs, but offloads

→ qwen3:14b 14B — 9.9 GB vs 8 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ gemma3:12b 12B — 9.6 GB vs 8 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ deepseek-r1:14b distill 14B — 9.8 GB vs 8 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ phi4:14b 14B — 9.9 GB vs 8 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ whisper:large-v3 large-v3 — 8.2 of 8 GB usable — barely over; real with q8 KV cache (halves KV) or shorter context

→ sdxl SDXL base — 8.9 GB vs 8 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

Gotchas

⚠ No direct published LLM bench found (localmaxxing has no RX 590 entry; r/LocalLLaMA has no isolated 590 numbers) — nearest silicon is RX 580 8GB (same 2304 SPs, same 256-bit/8Gbps memory, ~5-10% lower clocks), so expect RX 580-class Vulkan tok/s: ~8-15 on 7B Q4_K_M — marked as inference from sibling silicon, not measured

⚠ Pre-RDNA Polaris (gfx803): no ROCm — Vulkan/llama.cpp only

⚠ RX 590 GME is a 2020 China-market rebrand on 14nm Polaris 20 XTX (essentially an overclocked RX 580), NOT the 12nm Polaris 30 of the real RX 590 — check die/clocks before paying 590 prices

⚠ 225W TDP (real 590) — needs 8-pin + often 6-pin PCIe power and a solid PSU; runs hot in small cases

⚠ Some Sapphire Nitro+ SE SKUs ship faster 8.4Gbps memory (268.8 GB/s); base spec is 256.0 GB/s

Where to go next

RTX 3060 12GB (used)

$350 — +4GB VRAM, tensor cores, modern stack

eBay (used) ↗ · Amazon ↗

rx-6700-xt

12GB RDNA2 — 2.9x bandwidth, ROCm-supported

→ its best-models page

2026-09-18 · ← full hardware catalog · fit = working set vs VRAM · speeds are community-reported, cited in our knowledge base