ERNIE-Image (Turbo) on 8 GB of VRAM
Download Q4_K_M (5.0 GB). With the model's working memory it needs about 7.3 GB, leaving 0.7 GB spare on 8 GB. Quality: good; some loss in fine detail and text. For better quality, Q5_K_M (5.9 GB) also runs, with about 0.2 GB spilling into system RAM — a little slower, still practical.
01What to download
| Part | File | Folder | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | ernie-image-turbo-Q4_K_M.gguf Q4_K_M · unsloth/ERNIE-Image-Turbo-GGUF | models/unet | 5.0 GB | Download → |
| Text encoder | ministral-3-3b.safetensors Ministral 3 3B · Comfy-Org/ERNIE-Image | models/text_encoders | 7.7 GB | Download → |
| VAE | flux2-vae.safetensors FLUX.2 VAE · Comfy-Org/ERNIE-Image | models/vae | 0.3 GB | Download → |
| Total download · keep about the same free on disk | 13.1 GB | |||
Only for some workflows: ERNIE prompt enhancer (optional) (6.9 GB). Sizes read from Hugging Face (2026-09-25). “Download” links start the file directly; the file name links are the same files the official ComfyUI workflows use.
System RAM: 32 GB or more. ComfyUI keeps the model file, the text encoder and the VAE in system RAM and moves them to the GPU as needed. With this set of files that is about 13.1 GB, plus roughly 6 GB for Windows, ComfyUI and a browser: 19.1 GB in total. With less RAM it still runs, but Windows starts swapping to disk and loading gets very slow. calculated
02Every file, on 8 GB
| File | Size | Needed | On this card | Quality | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16-bit SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 16.1 GB | 18.4 GB | 10.4 GB too big | the original weights | Hugging Face → |
| Q8_0 GGUF · unsloth | 8.7 GB | 11.0 GB | 3.0 GB too big | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q6_K GGUF · unsloth | 6.8 GB | 9.1 GB | spills 1.1 GB | very close to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q5_K_M GGUF · unsloth | 5.9 GB | 8.2 GB | spills 0.2 GB | close; small differences in fine detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q4_K_M ← GGUF · unsloth | 5.0 GB | 7.3 GB | fits · 0.7 GB spare | good; some loss in fine detail and text | Hugging Face → |
| Q3_K_M GGUF · unsloth | 3.9 GB | 6.2 GB | fits · 1.8 GB spare | noticeable loss of detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q2_K GGUF · unsloth | 3.2 GB | 5.5 GB | fits · 2.5 GB spare | heavy loss; a last resort | Hugging Face → |
Sizes from the Hugging Face file listing, read 2026-09-25. “Needed” = file + 1.5 GB working memory for this model + 0.8 GB kept free for the system.
03The text encoder
Ministral 3 3B: 7.7 GB as 16-bit (an optional prompt-enhancer LLM (6.9 GB) can be skipped). ComfyUI encodes the prompt first and can push the encoder out of VRAM before sampling, so it does not have to fit together with the model. On 8 GB the encoder itself is too big for VRAM, so let it run from system RAM: slower prompt encoding, same images.