Can the Radeon RX 9070 run Qwen3 30B-A3B?
Only with CPU offload at Q4_K_M.
Qwen3 30B-A3B is 30.5B parameters (MoE; all experts resident). At Q4_K_M the weights are about 17.0 GiB; with the 1.5 GiB runtime reserve that is 18.5 GiB against the card's 16GB, about 2.5 GiB more than the card has.
All three quants
16GB card| Quant | Weights | With reserve | Verdict | Headroom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_Mthe everyday quant | 17.0 GiB | 18.5 GiB | Only with CPU offload | short 2.5 GiB |
| Q8_0near-lossless | 30.1 GiB | 31.6 GiB | Only with CPU offload | short 15.6 GiB |
| FP16full weights | 56.8 GiB | 58.3 GiB | Does not fit | short 42.3 GiB |
Verdict rules: fits comfortably when weights plus reserve sit within 85% of VRAM; tight when they fit with little left for context; CPU offload when they exceed VRAM by up to 2x (runs, slowly, with layers in system RAM); no beyond that. The KV cache per token depends on the model's architecture and is not modelled here.
Not this card. These fit it comfortably at Q4.
- GeForce RTX 5090 32GB · headroom 13.5 GiB
- GeForce RTX 3090 (used) 24GB · headroom 5.5 GiB
- GeForce RTX 4090 (used) 24GB · headroom 5.5 GiB
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB · headroom 5.5 GiB
What the Radeon RX 9070 does run well → · Qwen3 30B-A3B on every card →
About the model
Qwen3 30B-A3B by Alibaba Qwen: 32,768-token native context, text, released 2025 under the Apache-2.0. Model card → · Hosted pricing on PicksByModel →