Can Samantha 7B run on GTX 1080 Ti 11GB?

YES — Runs Great

A72Great

Estimated from fit model

Samantha 7B needs ~8.5 GB VRAM. GTX 1080 Ti 11GB has 11.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~67 tok/s.

Runtime: OllamaCapacity: RoomyBandwidth: MediumStack: BasicBottleneck: Balanced

Operating mode

Choose the run profile you care about

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.

Capabilities:

Select quantization to explore

Q4_K_M (Medium quality) — 8.5 GB, 71.9 tok/s, Runs well

8.5 GB required11.0 GB available

77% VRAM used

Fit status

Runs well

Decode

71.9 tok/s

TTFT

2693 ms

Safe context

Memory

8.5 GB / 11.0 GB

Memory breakdown

Weights4.3 GB

KV Cache2.0 GB

Runtime1.2 GB

Headroom1.1 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsSamantha 7B on GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
1st promptCold start — includes initialization
>What is local AI inference?
Local AI inference means running an AI language model directly on your own hardware — your laptop, desktop, or server — instead of sending requests to a remote cloud API.

When you run inference locally the model weights are loaded into your GPU or unified memory. Each token you generate requires reading those weights from memory, so memory bandwidth is the main bottleneck for decode speed.

Key benefits of running locally:
  - Full privacy: your prompts never leave your machine
  - No per-token cost or rate limits
  - Works offline once the model is downloaded
  - Latency depends only on your hardware
2nd promptWarm — model ready, no init overhead
>How much VRAM do I need?
It depends on the model size and quantization level. A rough rule of thumb:

  Model size     Q4 (4-bit)    Q8 (8-bit)    FP16
  7B params      ~4.3 GB       ~7.5 GB       ~14 GB
  13B params     ~7.9 GB       ~13.9 GB      ~26 GB
  70B params     ~42.7 GB      ~74.9 GB      ~140 GB

Most people use 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M) which gives 90-95% of full quality at a fraction of the memory. A 24 GB GPU can comfortably run most 7B-13B models.
Estimated: 71.9 tok/s decode · 2.7s TTFT (warm) · 180 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.

Older PCIe generation

PCIe 3.0 is workable, but it compounds the penalty when you offload heavily or try to scale across multiple cards.

Best improvement path

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	A	Runs well	66.9 tok/s	1579 ms	4K
Coding	A	Runs well	66.9 tok/s	2895 ms	4K
Agentic Coding	B	Runs with offload	66.9 tok/s	4211 ms	4K
Reasoning	A	Runs well	66.9 tok/s	3421 ms	4K
RAG	B	Runs with offload	66.9 tok/s	5263 ms	4K

Quantization options

How Samantha 7B (7B params) fits at each quantization level on GTX 1080 Ti 11GB (11.0 GB usable).

Quant	Bits	VRAM	Quality	Fit
Q2_K	2	2.7 GB	Low	B66
Q3_K_S	3	3.4 GB	Low	B67
NVFP4	4	3.9 GB	Medium	B68
Q4_K_M	4	4.3 GB	Medium	B68
Q5_K_M	5	5.0 GB	High	B69
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

Get started

Copy-paste commands to run Samantha 7B on your machine.

Run

docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
  --hf-repo "cognitivecomputations/samantha-1.1-llama-7b" \
  --hf-file "samantha-1.1-llama-7b-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
  -c 4096 -ngl 99

Your hardware

More models your GTX 1080 Ti 11GB can run

Model	Params	Grade	Decode
Qwen 3.5 9B	9B	S	55.9 tok/s
Qwen 3 8B	8B	S	62.9 tok/s
Nemotron Nano 8B	8B	S	62.9 tok/s
InternVL2 8B	8B	A	62.9 tok/s
Ministral 3 8B	8B	A	62.9 tok/s

Frequently asked questions

Can GTX 1080 Ti 11GB run Samantha 7B?

Yes, GTX 1080 Ti 11GB can run Samantha 7B with a A grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 66.9 tok/s.

How much VRAM does Samantha 7B need?

Samantha 7B (7B parameters) requires approximately 8.5 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.

What is the best quantization for Samantha 7B?

The recommended quantization for Samantha 7B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.

What speed will Samantha 7B run at on GTX 1080 Ti 11GB?

On GTX 1080 Ti 11GB, Samantha 7B achieves approximately 66.9 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 2895ms using Q4_K_M quantization.

Can GTX 1080 Ti 11GB run Samantha 7B for coding?

For coding workloads, Samantha 7B on GTX 1080 Ti 11GB receives a A grade with 66.9 tok/s and 4K context.

What context window can Samantha 7B use on GTX 1080 Ti 11GB?

On GTX 1080 Ti 11GB, Samantha 7B can safely use up to 4K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 4K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.

See all results for GTX 1080 Ti 11GB See all hardware for Samantha 7B

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