FitMyLLM
INTEL· GENERATION 12.1

Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics

Running LLMs on the Iris Xe MAX Graphics — the long read: which models fit at which quantisation, and the settings worth changing. · Or what a budget buys

VRAM
4 GB
BUDGET
BANDWIDTH
68
GB/S
MODELS Q4
97/449
22%
7B Q4 SPEED
~3
SLOW
▸ MODEL COVERAGE @ Q422% OF ALL
▸ ESTIMATED SPEED· BY MODEL SIZE @ Q4

Average speeds at Q4 quantization. Actual performance varies by model architecture and context length.

3B
~7
TOK/S
7B
3.9GB NEEDED
14B
7.9GB NEEDED
32B
18.0GB NEEDED
70B
39.4GB NEEDED
▸ MEASURED RIG REPORTS

We rent the machine and time every model on it: decode, VRAM peak, concurrency, watts and cost per million tokens. Yours may already be one of them — and two are free to read in full.

SEE THE REPORTS
▸ SPECIFICATIONS
VRAM
4 GB
BANDWIDTH
68 GB/s
FP16 COMPUTE
5.1 TFLOPS
TDP
25W
MEMORY
LPDDR4X
ARCHITECTURE
Generation 12.1
COMPUTE UNITS
48
PCIE
Gen 4 x8
22
FAST MODELS · >30 TOK/S
Real-time chat speed
60
USABLE · >10 TOK/S
Comfortable for all tasks
97
TOTAL COMPATIBLE
Fit in VRAM at Q4
▸ DON’T WANT TO BUY?

Test Iris Xe MAX Graphics (or anything bigger) without committing. Pay by the second, cancel anytime.

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▸ COMPATIBLE MODELS· 97
S
Falcon-H1R Tiny 90M0.09B
FALCON·256K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
242
TOK/S · 14% VRAM
S
SmolLM2 135M0.135B
SMOLLM·2K CTX· CHAT
161
TOK/S · 14% VRAM
S
nomic-embed-text-v1.5 100M0.14B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· CHAT
155
TOK/S · 14% VRAM
S
GPT-2 124M0.14B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
155
TOK/S · 14% VRAM
S
SmolVLM 256M0.256B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION
85
TOK/S · 16% VRAM
S
Gemma 3 270M0.27B
GEMMA·32K CTX· CHAT
81
TOK/S · 16% VRAM
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed M v2.00.305B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
71
TOK/S · 17% VRAM
S
bge-large-en-v1.5 335M0.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· CHAT
65
TOK/S · 17% VRAM
S
mxbai-embed-large-v10.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING
65
TOK/S · 17% VRAM
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed L0.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING
65
TOK/S · 17% VRAM
S
LFM2 350M0.35B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE
62
TOK/S · 18% VRAM
S
SmolLM2 360M0.36B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT
60
TOK/S · 18% VRAM
A
GPT-2 Medium 345M0.38B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
57
TOK/S · 18% VRAM
A
Qwen 2.5 0.5B0.5B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT
44
TOK/S · 20% VRAM
A
SmolVLM 500M0.5B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION
44
TOK/S · 20% VRAM
A
Falcon-H1 0.5B0.52B
FALCON·128K CTX· CHAT
42
TOK/S · 20% VRAM
B
BGE-M30.568B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING
38
TOK/S · 21% VRAM
B
Snowflake Arctic Embed L v2.00.568B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
38
TOK/S · 21% VRAM
B
Qwen3-Embedding 0.6B0.6B
EMBEDDING·32K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
36
TOK/S · 21% VRAM
B
Falcon-H1R Tiny 0.6B0.6B
FALCON·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
36
TOK/S · 21% VRAM
B
Falcon Perception 0.6B0.6B
FALCON·4K CTX· VISION
36
TOK/S · 21% VRAM
B
Qwen 1.5 0.5B0.62B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT
35
TOK/S · 22% VRAM
B
Qwen3 0.6B0.75B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
29
TOK/S · 24% VRAM
B
LFM2 700M0.74B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE
29
TOK/S · 24% VRAM
B
GPT-2 Large 774M0.81B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
27
TOK/S · 25% VRAM
B
Qwen 3.5 0.8B0.87B
QWEN·256K CTX· CHAT· CODING· MULTILINGUAL
25
TOK/S · 26% VRAM
C
InternVL3 1B0.94B
OTHER·32K CTX· CHAT· VISION
23
TOK/S · 27% VRAM
C
TinyLlama 1.1B1.1B
LLAMA·2K CTX· CHAT
20
TOK/S · 29% VRAM
C
MiniCPM5 1B1.08B
MINICPM·128K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· MULTILINGUAL
20
TOK/S · 29% VRAM
C
LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking1.2B
LFM·122K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· TOOL_USE
18
TOK/S · 31% VRAM
C
Llama-3.2-1B1.2B
LLAMA·4K CTX· CHAT
18
TOK/S · 31% VRAM
C
LFM2 1.2B1.2B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· MULTILINGUAL
18
TOK/S · 31% VRAM
C
Zamba2 1.2B1.2B
OTHER·4K CTX· CHAT
18
TOK/S · 31% VRAM
C
EXAONE-4.0-1.2B1.3B
EXAONE·64K CTX· CHAT
17
TOK/S · 32% VRAM
C
OPT 1.3B1.3B
OPT·2K CTX· CHAT
17
TOK/S · 32% VRAM
C
MiniCPM-V 4.61.3B
OTHER·256K CTX· CHAT· VISION
17
TOK/S · 32% VRAM
C
DeepSeek Coder 1.3B1.35B
DEEPSEEK·16K CTX· CODING
16
TOK/S · 33% VRAM
C
Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B1.5B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· CODING
15
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
C
Qwen2 Math 1.5B1.5B
QWEN·4K CTX· REASONING
15
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
C
Qwen 2.5 1.5B1.5B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT· CODING
15
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
▸ NEXT STEP

Get personalized recommendations.

See ranked models with benchmark scores, run commands, and precise speed estimates for your Iris Xe MAX Graphics.

WHAT THIS CARD IS WORTH

Iris Xe MAX Graphics holds 97 of the models in our catalogue and is, in practice, a Q4_K_M card — the largest it takes is InternLM2 5B at Q4_K_M.

TOKENS/SEC PER $100
8B at Q4_K_M, so cards compare like for like
VRAM PER $100
what memory costs on this card
THE BIGGEST IT TAKES
InternLM2 5B4.5B · Q4_K_M3.6 GB4 tok/sEST
Ministral 3 3B Reasoning4.25B · Q4_K_M3.3 GB5 tok/sEST
Qwen3 4B4B · Q4_K_M3.3 GB5 tok/sEST
Qwen3-4B Instruct 25074B · Q4_K_M3.3 GB5 tok/sEST
Qwen3-Embedding 4B4B · Q4_K_M3.3 GB5 tok/sEST
Nemotron 3 Nano 4B3.97B · Q4_K_M3.4 GB5 tok/sEST
Ministral 3 3B3.85B · Q5_K_M3.5 GB4 tok/sEST
phi-3-mini-4k 3.8B3.8B · Q4_K_M3.4 GB5 tok/sEST
AGAINST CARDS OF SIMILAR MEMORY
RTX 3070 Ti8 GB$49912.6 tok/s per $100
RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X8 GB$39915.8 tok/s per $100
RTX 3070 Ti 8 GB GA1028 GB$59910.5 tok/s per $100
Arc A7508 GB$19910.1 tok/s per $100
Iris Xe MAX Graphics4 GB

Neighbours in memory rather than in price: memory decides whether a card can do the job at all, so two cards of the same size at different prices is the comparison you are making. Ordered by memory, then bandwidth — not by the value column, which is worked out from bandwidth and price alone and therefore rewards a cheap card whatever its software stack does to that bandwidth in practice. Read it as one input, not as a ranking.

▸ DEVICE UNDER TEST

Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics — 4 GB VRAM.

IRIS XE MAX GRAPHICS SPEC
BRAND
Intel
VRAM
4 GB LPDDR4X
BANDWIDTH
68 GB/s
FP16 COMPUTE
5.1 TFLOPS
FP32 COMPUTE
2.5 TFLOPS
TDP
25 W
ARCHITECTURE
Generation 12.1
▸ AI CAPABILITY
97/ 449 models @ Q4

With 4 GB VRAM and 68 GB/s bandwidth, this GPU handles models up to 4.25B parameters.

Speed ≈ bandwidth / model_size × efficiency. A 7B model at Q4 runs at ~8 tok/s.

§ 01TOP MODELS FOR IRIS XE MAX GRAPHICS
97 FIT · SHOWING 20
MODELSIZEVRAM Q4TOK/SAVG
Ministral 3 3B Reasoning4.25B3.1 GB5
Qwen 1.5 4B4B2.9 GB512.6
Qwen3 4B4B2.9 GB540.7
Qwen3-4B Instruct 25074B2.9 GB537.2
Qwen3-Embedding 4B4B2.9 GB5
Nemotron 3 Nano 4B3.97B2.9 GB532.0
Ministral 3 3B3.85B2.8 GB621.4
Phi-3.5 Mini 3.8B3.82B2.8 GB646.6
phi-3-mini-4k 3.8B3.8B2.8 GB630.5
Phi-4-mini 3.8B3.8B2.8 GB649.0
Cogito 3B3.61B2.7 GB622.1
Falcon3-3B3.23B2.5 GB725.7
granite-4.0-h-micro 3.2B3.2B2.4 GB718.4
Llama-3.2-3B3.2B2.4 GB717.9
Falcon-H1 3B3.15B2.4 GB749.5
Qwen 2.5 3B3.1B2.4 GB737.2
SmolLM3-3B3.1B2.4 GB730.5
Ministral 3B3B2.3 GB729.6
StarCoder2 3B3B2.3 GB79.5
Granite 4.1 3B3B2.3 GB716.6