Ideogram 4 on 6 GB of VRAM
Not realistically: the smallest Ideogram 4 file still needs about 15 GB. Ideogram's open-weights model (June 2026, non-commercial). It uses two transformers at once - a main one and an "unconditional" one - so it needs about twice the memory of one file.
Even the smallest file (Q4_1, 6.2 GB (×2, both loaded)) needs about 14.7 GB, far beyond 6 GB. It may start with heavy offloading, but this is not a realistic everyday setup. Pick a smaller model or a GPU with more memory.
Also try the FP8 file (9.3 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 6 GB
| File | Size | Needed | On this card | Quality | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q8_0 GGUF · molbal | 10.1 GB ×2 | 22.6 GB | 16.6 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| FP8 SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 9.3 GB ×2 | 20.9 GB | 14.9 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| INT8 SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 9.6 GB ×2 | 21.5 GB | 15.5 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q5_1 GGUF · molbal | 7.3 GB ×2 | 17.0 GB | 11.0 GB too big | close; small differences in fine detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q4_1 ← GGUF · molbal | 6.2 GB ×2 | 14.7 GB | 8.7 GB too big | good; some loss in fine detail and text | Hugging Face → |
“Needed” adds 1.5 GB of working memory for Ideogram 4 and a 0.8 GB reserve. Sizes 2026-10-01. Needs two transformer files loaded together (main + unconditional). GGUF files need the molbal fork of ComfyUI-GGUF. No 16-bit weights were released.
03What to download
| Part | File | Folder | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | ideogram4-transformer-q4_1.gguf main model Q4_1 · molbal/ideogram-4-gguf | models/unet | 6.2 GB | Download → |
| Model | ideogram4-unconditional_transformer-q4_1.gguf unconditional model, loaded together with the main one Q4_1 · molbal/ideogram-4-gguf | models/unet | 6.2 GB | Download → |
| Text encoder | qwen3vl_8b_fp8_scaled.safetensors Qwen3-VL 8B FP8 · Comfy-Org/Ideogram-4 | models/text_encoders | 10.6 GB | Download → |
| VAE | flux2-vae.safetensors FLUX.2 VAE · Comfy-Org/Ideogram-4 | models/vae | 0.3 GB | Download → |
| Total download · keep about the same free on disk | 23.3 GB | |||
Alternatives: Qwen3-VL 8B NVFP4 (6.3 GB). FP4 files are listed only as alternatives unless the GPU is an RTX 50 (Blackwell). Sizes from Hugging Face, 2026-10-01.
04The text encoder
At 6.3 GB even the smallest Qwen3-VL 8B file is too big for 6 GB, so it runs from system RAM. That slows down reading the prompt, not the picture. Sizes: FP8 10.6 GB, NVFP4 6.3 GB. Why the encoder does not count against VRAM →