Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B needs ~4.5 GB VRAM. GTX 1650 4GB has 4.0 GB. With Q2_K quantization, expect ~22 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
1.4 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Too heavy
Decode
11.3 tok/s
TTFT
17165 ms
Safe context
4K
Memory
5.4 GB / 4.0 GB
Offload
30%
It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.
CPU or host-memory offload is active
About 10% 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.
Older PCIe generation
PCIe 3.0 is workable, but it compounds the penalty when you offload heavily or try to scale across multiple cards.
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 0.2 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | A | Very compromised (needs ~0.3 GB host RAM) | 15.6 tok/s | 6791 ms | 4K |
| Coding | F | Too heavy | 10.5 tok/s | 18452 ms | 4K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 6.6 tok/s | 42356 ms | 4K |
| Reasoning | F | Too heavy | 11.3 tok/s | 20286 ms | 4K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 6.6 tok/s | 52945 ms | 4K |
How Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B (3.799999952316284B params) fits at each quantization level on GTX 1650 4GB (4.0 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_KBest for your GPU | 2 | 1.5 GB | Low | S92 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 1.9 GB | Low | F0 |
Copy-paste commands to run Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B on your machine.
Run
ollama run phi4-miniUpgrade options
GTX 1660 Super 6GBBudget pickMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$229 MSRP
RTX 3050 8GBBest valueMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$249 MSRP
GTX 1060 6GBNVIDIA upgradeMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$249 MSRP
Yes, GTX 1650 4GB can run Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B at Q2_K quantization (Very compromised (needs ~0.2 GB host RAM)). The recommended Q4_K_M requires 5.4 GB which exceeds available memory, but at Q2_K it needs only 4.5 GB. Expected decode speed: 21.7 tok/s.
Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B (3.799999952316284B parameters) requires approximately 5.4 GB at Q4_K_M quantization. On GTX 1650 4GB, it fits at Q2_K using 4.5 GB.
The recommended quantization is Q4_K_M, but on GTX 1650 4GB the best fitting quantization is Q2_K, which uses 4.5 GB.
On GTX 1650 4GB, Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B achieves approximately 21.7 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 8912ms using Q2_K quantization.
For coding workloads, Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B on GTX 1650 4GB receives a F grade with 10.5 tok/s and 4K context.
On GTX 1650 4GB, Phi-4 Mini Reasoning 4B can safely use up to 10K tokens of context at Q2_K quantization. The model's official context limit is 131K, 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/phi-4-mini-reasoning-on-gtx-1650-4gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
| 4 |
2.1 GB |
| Medium |
| F0 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 2.3 GB | Medium | F0 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 2.7 GB | High | F0 |
Q6_K | 6 | 3.1 GB | High | F0 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 4.1 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 7.8 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.