FitMyLLM
AMD· GCN 1.0

AMD Radeon HD 7870 XT

Running LLMs on the Radeon HD 7870 XT — the long read: which models fit at which quantisation, and the settings worth changing. · Or what a budget buys

VRAM
2 GB
BUDGET
BANDWIDTH
192
GB/S
MODELS Q4
47/449
10%
7B Q4 SPEED
~24
GOOD
▸ MODEL COVERAGE @ Q410% OF ALL
▸ ESTIMATED SPEED· BY MODEL SIZE @ Q4

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

3B
1.7GB NEEDED
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
2 GB
BANDWIDTH
192 GB/s
FP16 COMPUTE
3 TFLOPS
TDP
185W
MEMORY
GDDR5
ARCHITECTURE
GCN 1.0
STREAM PROCESSORS
1,536
COMPUTE UNITS
24
PCIE
Gen 3 x16
47
FAST MODELS · >30 TOK/S
Real-time chat speed
47
USABLE · >10 TOK/S
Comfortable for all tasks
47
TOTAL COMPATIBLE
Fit in VRAM at Q4
▸ DON’T WANT TO BUY?

Test Radeon HD 7870 XT (or anything bigger) without committing. Pay by the second, cancel anytime.

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▸ COMPATIBLE MODELS· 47
S
Falcon-H1R Tiny 90M0.09B
FALCON·256K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
1896
TOK/S · 27% VRAM
S
SmolLM2 135M0.135B
SMOLLM·2K CTX· CHAT
1264
TOK/S · 29% VRAM
S
nomic-embed-text-v1.5 100M0.14B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· CHAT
1219
TOK/S · 29% VRAM
S
GPT-2 124M0.14B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
1219
TOK/S · 29% VRAM
S
SmolVLM 256M0.256B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION
667
TOK/S · 32% VRAM
S
Gemma 3 270M0.27B
GEMMA·32K CTX· CHAT
632
TOK/S · 33% VRAM
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed M v2.00.305B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
560
TOK/S · 34% VRAM
S
bge-large-en-v1.5 335M0.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· CHAT
509
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
S
mxbai-embed-large-v10.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING
509
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed L0.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING
509
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
S
LFM2 350M0.35B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE
488
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
S
SmolLM2 360M0.36B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT
474
TOK/S · 35% VRAM
S
GPT-2 Medium 345M0.38B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
449
TOK/S · 36% VRAM
S
Qwen 2.5 0.5B0.5B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT
341
TOK/S · 40% VRAM
S
SmolVLM 500M0.5B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION
341
TOK/S · 40% VRAM
S
Falcon-H1 0.5B0.52B
FALCON·128K CTX· CHAT
328
TOK/S · 40% VRAM
S
BGE-M30.568B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING
300
TOK/S · 42% VRAM
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed L v2.00.568B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
300
TOK/S · 42% VRAM
S
Qwen3-Embedding 0.6B0.6B
EMBEDDING·32K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
284
TOK/S · 43% VRAM
S
Falcon-H1R Tiny 0.6B0.6B
FALCON·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
284
TOK/S · 43% VRAM
S
Falcon Perception 0.6B0.6B
FALCON·4K CTX· VISION
284
TOK/S · 43% VRAM
S
Qwen 1.5 0.5B0.62B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT
275
TOK/S · 43% VRAM
S
LFM2 700M0.74B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE
231
TOK/S · 47% VRAM
S
Qwen3 0.6B0.75B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
228
TOK/S · 47% VRAM
S
GPT-2 Large 774M0.81B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
211
TOK/S · 49% VRAM
S
Qwen 3.5 0.8B0.87B
QWEN·256K CTX· CHAT· CODING· MULTILINGUAL
196
TOK/S · 51% VRAM
S
InternVL3 1B0.94B
OTHER·32K CTX· CHAT· VISION
182
TOK/S · 53% VRAM
S
MiniCPM5 1B1.08B
MINICPM·128K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· MULTILINGUAL
158
TOK/S · 57% VRAM
S
TinyLlama 1.1B1.1B
LLAMA·2K CTX· CHAT
155
TOK/S · 58% VRAM
S
LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking1.2B
LFM·122K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· TOOL_USE
142
TOK/S · 61% VRAM
S
Llama-3.2-1B1.2B
LLAMA·4K CTX· CHAT
142
TOK/S · 61% VRAM
S
LFM2 1.2B1.2B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· MULTILINGUAL
142
TOK/S · 61% VRAM
S
Zamba2 1.2B1.2B
OTHER·4K CTX· CHAT
142
TOK/S · 61% VRAM
S
EXAONE-4.0-1.2B1.3B
EXAONE·64K CTX· CHAT
131
TOK/S · 64% VRAM
S
OPT 1.3B1.3B
OPT·2K CTX· CHAT
131
TOK/S · 64% VRAM
S
MiniCPM-V 4.61.3B
OTHER·256K CTX· CHAT· VISION
131
TOK/S · 64% VRAM
S
DeepSeek Coder 1.3B1.35B
DEEPSEEK·16K CTX· CODING
126
TOK/S · 66% VRAM
S
Phi-1 1.3B1.42B
PHI·2K CTX· CODING
120
TOK/S · 68% VRAM
S
Phi-1.5 1.3B1.42B
PHI·2K CTX· CHAT· CODING
120
TOK/S · 68% VRAM
S
Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B1.5B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· CODING
114
TOK/S · 70% VRAM
▸ NEXT STEP

Get personalized recommendations.

See ranked models with benchmark scores, run commands, and precise speed estimates for your Radeon HD 7870 XT.

WHAT THIS CARD IS WORTH

Radeon HD 7870 XT holds 47 of the models in our catalogue and is, in practice, a Q4_K_M card — the largest it takes is Moondream2 1.9B 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
Moondream2 1.9B1.9B · Q4_K_M1.7 GB58 tok/sEST
Falcon3-1B1.67B · Q5_K_M1.8 GB57 tok/sEST
LFM2-VL 1.6B1.6B · Q5_K_M1.7 GB59 tok/sEST
Falcon-H1 1.5B1.55B · Q6_K1.7 GB55 tok/sEST
Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B1.5B · Q6_K1.6 GB56 tok/sEST
Qwen2 Math 1.5B1.5B · Q6_K1.6 GB56 tok/sEST
Qwen 2.5 1.5B1.5B · Q6_K1.6 GB56 tok/sEST
Stella en 1.5B v51.5B · Q6_K1.6 GB56 tok/sEST
AGAINST CARDS OF SIMILAR MEMORY
M2 (8GB)5 GB$5992.8 tok/s per $100
M3 (8GB)5 GB$5992.8 tok/s per $100
M1 (8GB)5 GB$4992.2 tok/s per $100
RTX 2060 6GB6 GB$15026.7 tok/s per $100
Radeon HD 7870 XT2 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

AMD Radeon HD 7870 XT — 2 GB VRAM.

RADEON HD 7870 XT SPEC
BRAND
AMD
VRAM
2 GB GDDR5
BANDWIDTH
192 GB/s
FP16 COMPUTE
3 TFLOPS
FP32 COMPUTE
3 TFLOPS
STREAM PROCESSORS
1,536
TDP
185 W
ARCHITECTURE
GCN 1.0
▸ AI CAPABILITY
47/ 449 models @ Q4

With 2 GB VRAM and 192 GB/s bandwidth, this GPU handles models up to 1.61B parameters.

Speed ≈ bandwidth / model_size × efficiency. A 7B model at Q4 runs at ~22 tok/s.

§ 01TOP MODELS FOR RADEON HD 7870 XT
47 FIT · SHOWING 20
MODELSIZEVRAM Q4TOK/SAVG
GPT-2 XL 1.5B1.61B1.5 GB1065.1
stablelm-2-1_6b1.6B1.5 GB1079.5
Falcon-H1 1.5B1.55B1.4 GB11043.8
Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B1.5B1.4 GB11419.6
Qwen2 Math 1.5B1.5B1.4 GB11419.6
Qwen 2.5 1.5B1.5B1.4 GB11430.2
Yi Coder 1.5B1.5B1.4 GB11414.6
Stella en 1.5B v51.5B1.4 GB114
Phi-1 1.3B1.42B1.4 GB1207.2
Phi-1.5 1.3B1.42B1.4 GB1207.2
DeepSeek Coder 1.3B1.35B1.3 GB12616.8
EXAONE-4.0-1.2B1.3B1.3 GB13118.9
OPT 1.3B1.3B1.3 GB1315.3
MiniCPM-V 4.61.3B1.3 GB13121.5
LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking1.2B1.2 GB14219.6
Llama-3.2-1B1.2B1.2 GB14210.1
LFM2 1.2B1.2B1.2 GB14215.6
Zamba2 1.2B1.2B1.2 GB14241.5
TinyLlama 1.1B1.1B1.2 GB15513.6
MiniCPM5 1B1.08B1.1 GB15826.5