llmrun

NVIDIA · Pascal

Best AI Models for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4 GB)

Runs only small models well; 7–9B doesn't fit in 4 GB.

4 GB GDDR5112 GB/s2 TFLOPS FP1675 WPascal 2016
Buyabout $139

4 GB at 112 GB/s: small models only (~3B at Q4). Pascal: no Tensor Cores and very slow FP16, so it runs GGUF (llama.cpp, Ollama) fine but not FP16 runtimes like vLLM; current CUDA 13 builds dropped Pascal — use CUDA 12 or Vulkan builds.

What LLMs can the GTX 1050 Ti run?

#ModelSpeedllmrun ScoreQuant · VRAM
1
Qwen3.5 4BAlibabaHow to run →
Q4_K_M · 3.4 GB · 22.3 t/s
22.3 tok/sQ4_K_M · 3.4 GB
2
Qwen3.5 2BAlibaba
Q4_K_M · 1.9 GB · 41.1 t/s
41.1 tok/sQ4_K_M · 1.9 GB
3
MiniCPM5 2BOpenBMB
Q4_K_M · 2.5 GB · 38.3 t/s
38.3 tok/sQ4_K_M · 2.5 GB
4
Gemma 4 E2B ITGoogle
Q4_K_M · 3.5 GB · 21.2 t/s
21.2 tok/sQ4_K_M · 3.5 GB
5
LFM3 1.7BLiquid AI
Q4_K_M · 2.1 GB · 50.6 t/s
50.6 tok/sQ4_K_M · 2.1 GB
See all 151 models on the GTX 1050 Ti →Best quant that fits · speeds estimated on this card

About the GTX 1050 Ti

The GTX 1050 Ti is an entry card in the 4–6 GB class: it runs only small models well. It is power-hungry for its speed, and the best speed per dollar of the cards compared at ≈$65 used. Pascal generation, released 2016.

Speed in 4–6 GB#7112 GB/s
Per watt#50.27 tok/s per W on Qwen3.5 9B (9B params)
Per dollar#131.2 tok/s per $100 on Qwen3.5 9B (9B params)
GenerationPascalreleased 2016

GTX 1050 Ti strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

  • Low power draw: 75 W board power; a 150 W PSU is enough

Weaknesses

  • 7–9B models don't fit: Qwen3.5 9B needs 6.6 GB at Q4 vs 4 GB here
  • Slow prompt reading: A 4K-token prompt on Qwen3.5 4B waits 39.8 s for the first token
  • No FP8 or NVFP4: Pascal predates both; use GGUF, AWQ or GPTQ builds

Speed per dollar and per watt

On Qwen3.5 9B (9B params) at Q4_K_M. New prices are compared with new, used with used. The last two columns are the speed you get per $100 of price and per 100 W of board power; higher is better. The GTX 1050 Ti has no new price, so the New view shows it at its MSRP.

CardNew pricetok/stok/s per $100tok/s per 100 W
GTX 1050 Ti4 GB
about $13920.3
14.6
27.1
RTX 50608 GBBest new value
about $46045.8
10.0
31.6
RTX 507012 GB
about $84068.7
8.2
27.5
RTX 40608 GB
about $52027.8
5.3
24.2
CardUsed pricetok/stok/s per $100tok/s per 100 W
GTX 1050 Ti4 GB
about $6520.3
31.2
27.1
RTX 3060 12GB12 GB
about $32936.8
11.2
21.6
RTX 50608 GBBest used value
about $43045.8
10.7
31.6
RTX 407012 GB
about $57551.5
9.0
25.8
RTX 40608 GB
about $33527.8
8.3
24.2
RTX 4070 SUPER12 GB
about $67551.5
7.6
23.4
RTX 4060 Ti 8GB8 GB
about $40029.4
7.4
18.4
RTX 4070 Ti12 GB
about $72251.5
7.1
18.1

Cost per token: the GTX 1050 Ti against 4–12 GB cards

On Qwen3.5 9B (9B params, Q4_K_M, 4K context). Speed, cost per token and power per token depend on the model.

4 GB12 GBthis cardat MSRP
$0.00$0.50$1.00$1.50$0$1,000$ per 1M output tokens · lower is betterused price →RTX 3060 12GB · 12 GB · ≈$329 · $0.76 per 1M tokensRTX 4060 Ti 8GB · 8 GB · ≈$400 · $1.09 per 1M tokensRTX 5060 · 8 GB · ≈$430 · $0.73 per 1M tokensRTX 5070 · 12 GB · ≈$736 · $0.83 per 1M tokensRTX 4070 SUPER · 12 GB · ≈$675 · $1.01 per 1M tokensRTX 4070 Ti · 12 GB · ≈$722 · $1.12 per 1M tokensRTX 4060 · 8 GB · ≈$335 · $0.94 per 1M tokensRTX 4070 · 12 GB · ≈$575 · $0.87 per 1M tokensGTX 1050 Ti · 4 GB · ≈$65 · $0.36 per 1M tokensGTX 1050 TiRTX 5060RTX 5070RTX 4070 SUPERRTX 4070 TiRTX 4070RTX 3060 12GB
$0.00$0.50$1.00$1.50$0$1k$ per 1M output tokens · lower is betterused price →RTX 3060 12GB · 12 GB · ≈$329 · $0.76 per 1M tokensRTX 4060 Ti 8GB · 8 GB · ≈$400 · $1.09 per 1M tokensRTX 5060 · 8 GB · ≈$430 · $0.73 per 1M tokensRTX 5070 · 12 GB · ≈$736 · $0.83 per 1M tokensRTX 4070 SUPER · 12 GB · ≈$675 · $1.01 per 1M tokensRTX 4070 Ti · 12 GB · ≈$722 · $1.12 per 1M tokensRTX 4060 · 8 GB · ≈$335 · $0.94 per 1M tokensRTX 4070 · 12 GB · ≈$575 · $0.87 per 1M tokensGTX 1050 Ti · 4 GB · ≈$65 · $0.36 per 1M tokensGTX 1050 TiRTX 5060RTX 5070
Cost per 1M output tokenson Qwen3.5 9B · card over 3 years + power
$0.36
Card, used price
$0.20
Power
$0.15
3-year cost of ownership$114
Or rent an RTX 3080 in the cloud$0.11/hr

Renting costs as much as buying after ≈600 hours (≈0.4 years at 4 h a day).

Include card price

Each dot is a card; hover or tap it for its numbers, click to open it. Cards without a price for the chosen basis are left out. How we calculate cost per token

Similar GPUs

Cards people weigh against the GTX 1050 Ti, each with the one reason it is worth a look. Speeds on Qwen3.5 9B.

4 GB more and 45% fasterRTX 4060 Ti 8GBNVIDIA · 8 GB · Ada Lovelace
▲ 45% speed▲ 4 GBabout $399rent $0.15/hr
8 GB more and 81% fasterRTX 3060 12GBNVIDIA · 12 GB · Ampere
▲ 81% speed▲ 8 GBabout $329rent $0.07/hr
4 GB more and 2.3× the speedRTX 5060NVIDIA · 8 GB · Blackwell
▲ 126% speed▲ 4 GBabout $460
71% faster, same 4 GBRTX 3050 Laptop GPUNVIDIA · 4 GB · Ampere
▲ 71% speedsame 4 GB
2 GB more and nearly 2× the speedGTX 1660 SUPERNVIDIA · 6 GB · Turing
▲ 95% speed▲ 2 GBabout $229
4 GB more and nearly 2× the speedA750Intel · 8 GB · Alchemist
▲ 99% speed▲ 4 GBabout $289

GTX 1050 Ti tokens per second by model size

Output speed depends on memory bandwidth (112 GB/s). Grey rows need more than 4 GB.

  1. 9BQwen3.5 9B · not at 4-bit
    needs 6.6 GB
  2. 14BQwen3 14B · not at 4-bit
    needs 11.9 GB
  3. 27–31BQwen3.8 27B · not at 4-bit
    needs 17.9 GB
  4. 35B MoEQwen3.6 35B A3B · not at 4-bit
    needs 22.0 GB
  5. 70BLlama 3.3 70B Instruct · not at 4-bit
    needs 51.3 GB
  6. 120B MoEGPT OSS 120B · not at 4-bit
    needs 70.8 GB

Estimated speeds: Q4_K_M, 4K context, one user. How we estimate

All 562 models on the GTX 1050 Ti

Featured only

Best quant that fits, ordered by llmrun Score. Fit grades how well it runs here, S best. How ranking works

LLM models compatible with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti — ranked by Score, recency and Fit
ModelVRAMScoreFit
Tiny LlamaForCausalLM 3
Q4_K_M·242.7 t/s
0.4 GBS100, Runs great
Tiny FalconMambaForCausalLM
BF16·7280.0 t/s
0.2 GBS100, Runs great
Qwen3.5 4B Claude 4.6 Opus Reasoning Distilled
Q4_K_M·22.3 t/s
3.4 GBB55, Decent
Kumru 2B
Q4_K_M·39.6 t/s
2.2 GBA75, Runs well
Ilama 3.2 1B
BF16·25.6 t/s
3.3 GBB62, Decent
Qwen2.5 Tiny Random
Q4_K_M·242.7 t/s
0.6 GBS100, Runs great
Tiny LLM
Q4_K_M·234.8 t/s
0.3 GBS100, Runs great
Nanbeige4.1 3B
Q4_K_M·26.1 t/s
3.7 GBB48, Decent
Helium 1 2B
Q4_K_M·41.6 t/s
2.0 GBA76, Runs well
Qwen3.5 9B
IQ2_S·20.3 t/s
3.9 GBC34, Usable
Falcon H1 0.5B Instruct
Q4_K_M·105.5 t/s
1.2 GBS92, Runs great
Llm Jp 3.1 1.8B Instruct4
Q4_K_M·40.0 t/s
2.2 GBA75, Runs well
Falcon Mamba Tiny Dev
BF16·3640.0 t/s
0.4 GBS100, Runs great
Qwen3 Embedding 0.6B
Q4_K_M·94.5 t/s
1.6 GBS90, Runs great
TIPO 500M Ft
Q4_K_M·89.9 t/s
0.8 GBS89, Runs great

GTX 1050 Ti specs, power and PSU

Specs

Architecture
Pascal
VRAM
4 GB GDDR5
Memory bandwidth
112.0 GB/s
FP16 (dense)
2.14 TFLOPS
CUDA cores
768
Tensor cores
0
Compute capability
6.1
TDP
75 W
Released
2016-10-25
MSRP
$139

GTX 1050 Ti FAQ

Is the GTX 1050 Ti still worth it in 2026?

At ≈$65 used you get 31.2 tok/s per $100 on Qwen3.5 9B, which ranks 1st of the 8 cards compared here; it is also the 7th fastest out of 8 cards with 4–6 GB. It runs only small models well; 7–9B doesn't fit in 4 GB.

What is the largest model the GTX 1050 Ti can run?

Qwen3.5 4B (4.7B) is the largest at 4-bit or better: at Q4_K_M it uses 3.4 GB of 4 GB, and runs at about 22.3 tok/s.

Can the GTX 1050 Ti run 7–9B models?

No. Qwen3.5 9B needs 6.6 GB at Q4, more than the 4 GB on this card.

How many tokens per second does the GTX 1050 Ti give?

About 22.3 tok/s on Qwen3.5 4B at Q4_K_M, with the first token after 39.7 s on a 4K-token prompt.

What power supply does the GTX 1050 Ti need?

Plan a 150 W PSU (2× the 75 W TDP).

Is renting cheaper than buying a GTX 1050 Ti?

An RTX 3080 (10 GB) rents from $0.11/hr. Renting costs as much as buying after ≈600 hours (≈0.4 years at 4 h a day).

Related

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