HunyuanImage 2.1 on 12 GB of VRAM
Not at full quality. The 16-bit and 8-bit files are too big for 12 GB; the largest that fits is Q2_K (7.3 GB). Tencent's 17B model that generates natively at 2K. Its GGUF files come from calcuis and need calcuis's own GGUF loader node.
Q2_K (7.3 GB) fits with only 1.4 GB to spare (about 10.6 GB of 12 GB). Quality: heavy loss; a last resort. For better quality, Q3_K_M (9.8 GB) also runs, with about 1.1 GB spilling into system RAM - a little slower, still practical.
Also try the FP8 file (17.4 GB) on NVIDIA GPUs. It does not fit entirely, but a current ComfyUI streams the overflow from RAM and native 8-bit files often beat a small GGUF that does fit. Dynamic VRAM →
01Other amounts of VRAM
02Every file, on 12 GB
| File | Size | Needed | On this card | Quality | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16-bit SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 34.9 GB | 38.2 GB | 26.2 GB too big | the original weights | Hugging Face → |
| Q8_0 GGUF · calcuis | 19.8 GB | 23.1 GB | 11.1 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| FP8 SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 17.4 GB | 20.7 GB | 8.7 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q6_K GGUF · calcuis | 15.7 GB | 19.0 GB | 7.0 GB too big | very close to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q5_K_M GGUF · calcuis | 13.4 GB | 16.7 GB | 4.7 GB too big | close; small differences in fine detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q4_K_M GGUF · calcuis | 11.3 GB | 14.6 GB | 2.6 GB too big | good; some loss in fine detail and text | Hugging Face → |
| Q3_K_M GGUF · calcuis | 9.8 GB | 13.1 GB | spills 1.1 GB | noticeable loss of detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q2_K ← GGUF · calcuis | 7.3 GB | 10.6 GB | fits · 1.4 GB spare | heavy loss; a last resort | Hugging Face → |
“Needed” adds 2.5 GB of working memory for HunyuanImage 2.1 and a 0.8 GB reserve. Sizes 2026-10-01.
03What to download
| Part | File | Folder | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | hunyuanimage2.1-q2_k.gguf Q2_K · calcuis/hunyuanimage-gguf | models/unet | 7.3 GB | Download → |
| Text encoder | qwen_2.5_vl_7b_fp8_scaled.safetensors Qwen2.5-VL 7B FP8 · Comfy-Org/HunyuanImage_2.1_ComfyUI | models/text_encoders | 9.4 GB | Download → |
| Text encoder | byt5_small_glyphxl_fp16.safetensors ByT5 small Glyph-XL · Comfy-Org/HunyuanImage_2.1_ComfyUI | models/text_encoders | 0.4 GB | Download → |
| VAE | hunyuan_image_2.1_vae_fp16.safetensors HunyuanImage 2.1 VAE · Comfy-Org/HunyuanImage_2.1_ComfyUI | models/vae | 0.8 GB | Download → |
| Total download · keep about the same free on disk | 18.0 GB | |||
Alternatives: Qwen2.5-VL 7B BF16 (16.6 GB). Sizes from Hugging Face, 2026-10-01.