Can I Run / DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B / on NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti

Can I Run DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B on a NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti?

Yes

Runs at Q8_0 — near-lossless quality.

Model size
8.0B
GPU memory
12.0GB
Smallest quant
Q4_K_M
Best fit
Q8_0

4 quantizations fit your 12.0GB

QuantMin VRAMRecommendedFile sizeHeadroom
Q8_0BEST9.5 GB11.0 GB8.5 GB+2.5 GB
Q6_K7.6 GB9.1 GB6.6 GB+4.4 GB
Q5_K_M6.7 GB8.2 GB5.7 GB+5.3 GB
Q4_K_M5.8 GB7.3 GB4.8 GB+6.2 GB

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Full model details
DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B

All quant variants, benchmark scores, and use-case tags.

Best models for this GPU
NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti

Top-ranked open-source models that fit in 12.0GB.

FAQ

Can the NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti run DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B?

Yes. The NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti's 12.0GB of VRAM is enough to run DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B at Q8_0 quantization (9.5GB required).

What's the best quantization to use?

Q8_0 is the highest-precision quantization that fits in your 12.0GB. It uses about 9.5GB of memory and 11.0GB recommended for comfortable inference.

What if I need more headroom for context length?

KV cache memory grows with context length. The numbers above assume a baseline 2K-4K context. For long-context use (32K+), add another 2-6GB depending on the model architecture.