Phi-3 Medium 128K Instruct on Raspberry Pi 4 (8 GB)

Can the Raspberry Pi 4 (8 GB) run Phi-3 Medium 128K Instruct?

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Phi-3 Medium 128K Instruct needs about 8.4 GB even at Q2_K; the Raspberry Pi 4 (8 GB) has 6.4 GB usable.

Download Phi-3 Medium 128K Instruct

Recommended: Q2_K. Every other quantization has its own download link in the table below.

Quickest · Ollama

One command downloads a ready-to-run version and starts a chat.

Get Ollama at ollama.com/download (opens in a new tab) · model page (opens in a new tab)

ollama run phi3:14b-medium-128k-instruct-q2_K

Quantized files · GGUF

Works in LM Studio, llama.cpp, Jan and Ollama. No sign-in needed.

Download the Q2_K file (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/bartowski/Phi-3-medium-128k-instruct-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/bartowski/Phi-3-medium-128k-instruct-GGUF:Q2_K

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from Microsoft, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers.

huggingface.co/microsoft/Phi-3-medium-128k-instruct (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Links checked 1 day ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 32Basic quality (D) · 32 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 4/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.: How capable the model itself is at Q2_K, from its editorial quality tier scaled by the quantization or precision. It’s the same on any hardware that runs this variant. Scale: A+ 85+ · A 70+ · B 55+ · C 40+ · D under 40.
Runs Won't run: How well it runs on the Raspberry Pi 4 (8 GB): speed, capped by how well it fits in memory. Runs great: 30+ tokens/s (or near the image, video or decision speed target) · Runs well: 10+ tokens/s · Slow: 3+ tokens/s · Very slow: under 3 · Won’t run: doesn’t fit even with offload. A tight fit or RAM offload caps it at Runs well; heavy offload caps it at Slow.

Match score

To order lists, each result also gets a match score out of 100 from four parts. It favors the most capable model that still runs well.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.	4.3 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when the model fits in the share of unified memory the GPU can use; fewer when it goes past that limit.	0.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.	0.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.	0.0 / 15
Match score	4.3 / 100

The match score orders results; it is not shown as a grade. Quality and Runs are the two ratings in the tables.

It doesn’t fit, so only a reduced share of the quality points counts and fit, speed and memory use score zero.

Every quantization on the Raspberry Pi 4 (8 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Runs	Quality	Download
`Q2_K`	8.4 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	32Basic quality (D) · 32 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 4/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	9.6 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	38Basic quality (D) · 38 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 5/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	11.3 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	43Fair quality (C) · 43 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 5/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	12.7 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	44Fair quality (C) · 44 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	14.2 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	45Fair quality (C) · 45 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	17.6 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	46Fair quality (C) · 46 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	30.7 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	46Fair quality (C) · 46 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Memory figures assume 8K of context. Longer conversations or documents grow the KV cache.

Hardware that can run it

46Fair quality (C) · 46 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Q8_0 · 41.9 tok/s · Runs great
46Fair quality (C) · 46 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Q8_0 · 45.1 tok/s · Runs great
44Fair quality (C) · 44 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Q5_K_M · 40.0 tok/s · Runs great
44Fair quality (C) · 44 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Q5_K_M · 48.8 tok/s · Runs great
44Fair quality (C) · 44 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Q5_K_M · 53.5 tok/s · Runs great
44Fair quality (C) · 44 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Q5_K_M · 65.1 tok/s · Runs great

Models that do run on the Raspberry Pi 4 (8 GB)

67Good quality (B) · 67 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 72/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Nemotron Labs Dory 1.0 4B Q6_K · 1.1 tok/s
64Good quality (B) · 64 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 72/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Nanbeige4.2 3B Q4_K_M · 1.6 tok/s
65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 71/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Spark-X2.6 4B Q6_K · 1.1 tok/s
66Good quality (B) · 66 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 71/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B Q4_K_M · 1.5 tok/s
64Good quality (B) · 64 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 70/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Gemma 4 E4B Q4_K_M · 1.5 tok/s

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.