Qwen-Image on 16 GB of VRAM
Not at full quality. The 16-bit and 8-bit files are too big for 16 GB; the largest that fits is Q4_K_M (13.1 GB). Alibaba's 20B text-to-image model, known for rendering long text and posters well. Big: the 8-bit file alone is over 20 GB.
Q4_K_M (13.1 GB) fits with only 0.1 GB to spare (about 15.9 GB of 16 GB). Quality: good; some loss in fine detail and text. For better quality, Q5_K_M (14.9 GB) also runs, with about 1.7 GB spilling into system RAM - a little slower, still practical.
Also try the FP8 file (20.4 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 →
01What to download
| Part | File | Folder | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | qwen-image-Q4_K_M.gguf Q4_K_M · city96/Qwen-Image-gguf | models/unet | 13.1 GB | Download → |
| Text encoder | qwen_2.5_vl_7b_fp8_scaled.safetensors Qwen2.5-VL 7B FP8 · Comfy-Org/Qwen-Image_ComfyUI | models/text_encoders | 9.4 GB | Download → |
| VAE | qwen_image_vae.safetensors Qwen-Image VAE · Comfy-Org/Qwen-Image_ComfyUI | models/vae | 0.3 GB | Download → |
| Total download · keep about the same free on disk | 22.7 GB | |||
Alternatives: Qwen2.5-VL 7B BF16 (16.6 GB). Sizes from Hugging Face, 2026-10-01.
Free ComfyUI workflow, tested on my RTX 5060 Ti: GGUF Q4_K_M workflow (.json). Drag the file into ComfyUI. All workflows →
02Every file, on 16 GB
| File | Size | Needed | On this card | Quality | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16-bit SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 40.9 GB | 43.7 GB | 27.7 GB too big | the original weights | Hugging Face → |
| Q8_0 GGUF · city96 | 21.8 GB | 24.6 GB | 8.6 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| FP8 SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 20.4 GB | 23.2 GB | 7.2 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q6_K GGUF · city96 | 16.8 GB | 19.6 GB | 3.6 GB too big | very close to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q5_K_M GGUF · city96 | 14.9 GB | 17.7 GB | spills 1.7 GB | close; small differences in fine detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q4_K_M ← GGUF · city96 | 13.1 GB | 15.9 GB | fits · 0.1 GB spare | good; some loss in fine detail and text | Hugging Face → |
| Q3_K_M GGUF · city96 | 9.7 GB | 12.5 GB | fits · 3.5 GB spare | noticeable loss of detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q2_K GGUF · city96 | 7.1 GB | 9.9 GB | fits · 6.1 GB spare | heavy loss; a last resort | Hugging Face → |
“Needed” adds 2 GB of working memory for Qwen-Image and a 0.8 GB reserve. Sizes 2026-10-01.