Baichuan 7B needs ~14.2 GB VRAM. RTX 3500 Ada Laptop 12GB has 12.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~30 tok/s.
Operating mode
Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.
Current mode
Balanced
Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.
Select quantization to explore
2.2 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Very compromised (needs ~0.7 GB host RAM)
Decode
27.9 tok/s
TTFT
6944 ms
Safe context
8K
Memory
14.2 GB / 12.0 GB
Offload
20%
It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.
CPU or host-memory offload is active
About 20% of the working set spills out of accelerator memory, which usually hurts latency and sustained decode throughput.
Very little memory headroom
You can run the model, but there is not much room left for longer context, bigger batches, extra apps, or future model updates.
Remove offload with more accelerator memory
Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.
Buy headroom, not only minimum fit
A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.
Increase host RAM if you keep offloading
This setup may need roughly {ram} GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | B | Tight fit | 52.8 tok/s | 1998 ms | 8K |
| Coding | C | Very compromised | 30.3 tok/s | 6388 ms | 8K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 11.1 tok/s | 25437 ms | 8K |
| Reasoning | C | Very compromised (needs ~0.7 GB host RAM) | 27.9 tok/s | 8206 ms | 8K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 11.1 tok/s | 31796 ms | 8K |
How Baichuan 7B (7B params) fits at each quantization level on RTX 3500 Ada Laptop 12GB (12.0 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 2.7 GB | Low | B65 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 3.4 GB | Low | B66 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run Baichuan 7B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "baichuan-inc/Baichuan-7B" \
--hf-file "Baichuan-7B-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Upgrade options
RTX 5060 Ti 16GBBudget pickRemoves host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Raises estimated decode speed by about 133%.
~$449 MSRP
RTX 4060 Ti 16GBBest valueRemoves host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Raises estimated decode speed by about 62%.
~$499 MSRP
RTX 5070 Ti 16GBNVIDIA upgradeRemoves host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Raises estimated decode speed by about 377%.
~$749 MSRP
Yes, RTX 3500 Ada Laptop 12GB can run Baichuan 7B with a C grade (Very compromised). Expected decode speed: 30.3 tok/s.
Baichuan 7B (7B parameters) requires approximately 14.2 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Baichuan 7B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On RTX 3500 Ada Laptop 12GB, Baichuan 7B achieves approximately 30.3 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 6388ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Baichuan 7B on RTX 3500 Ada Laptop 12GB receives a C grade with 30.3 tok/s and 8K context.
On RTX 3500 Ada Laptop 12GB, Baichuan 7B can safely use up to 8K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 8K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/baichuan-7b-on-rtx-3500-ada-laptop-12gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
3.9 GB |
| Medium |
| B67 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 4.3 GB | Medium | B67 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 5.0 GB | High | B68 |
Q6_K | 6 | 5.7 GB | High | B69 |
Q8_0Best for your GPU | 8 | 7.5 GB | Very High | B68 |
F16 | 16 | 14.3 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Remove offload with more accelerator memory. Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.