DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B on AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

Can the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX run DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B?

Yes, it runs great

Runs great. At Q6_K it needs about 15.5 GB of 24.0 GB usable, with an estimated speed of 47.7 tok/s.

Best quant: Q6_K
Generation speed: 47.7 tok/s
Prompt processing: 5,155 tok/s
First token (1K prompt): 0.3 s
Largest safe context: 50K

Best app to run it on the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

On Windows

Lemonade

Desktop app · runs on llama.cpp, ONNX Runtime GenAI (Ryzen AI NPU)

AMD’s own app: llama.cpp tuned for Radeon on Vulkan and ROCm.

lemonade pull unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B-GGUF:Q6_K

LM Studio Point-and-click: search, download and chat in one window.
Ollama One command with Ollama’s own build of this model.

On Linux

Lemonade

Desktop app · runs on llama.cpp, ONNX Runtime GenAI (Ryzen AI NPU)

AMD’s own app: llama.cpp tuned for Radeon on Vulkan and ROCm.

lemonade pull unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B-GGUF:Q6_K

LM Studio Point-and-click: search, download and chat in one window.
Ollama One command with Ollama’s own build of this model.

How we choose: the files published for this model, your operating system and GPU, whether it fits fully in memory, and published speed tests (MLX vs llama.cpp on Apple silicon, vLLM vs llama.cpp vs Ollama on NVIDIA). Details.

Download DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B

Recommended for the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX: Q6_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 deepseek-r1:14b

Quantized files · GGUF

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

Download the Q6_K file (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B-GGUF:Q6_K

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

Reference code, inference scripts and docs from DeepSeek. The weights themselves download from Hugging Face.

github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 (opens in a new tab)

The R1 repo covers the distilled models too.

git clone https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1

Links checked 3 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 61Good quality (B) · 61 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.: How capable the model itself is at Q6_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 Runs great: How well it runs on the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX: 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.	27.6 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when everything sits in GPU memory; fewer when part spills to system RAM.	25.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.	15.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.	14.9 / 15
Match score	82.5 / 100

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

Every quantization on the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Runs	Quality	Download
`Q2_K`	9.3 GB	24.0 GB	113 tok/s	Runs great	43Fair quality (C) · 43 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 68/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	10.6 GB	24.0 GB	88.8 tok/s	Runs great	52Fair quality (C) · 52 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 73/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	12.4 GB	24.0 GB	68.7 tok/s	Runs great	58Good quality (B) · 58 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 78/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	13.9 GB	24.0 GB	56.8 tok/s	Runs great	60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 80/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	15.5 GB	24.0 GB	47.7 tok/s	Runs great	61Good quality (B) · 61 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	19.1 GB	24.0 GB	35.0 tok/s	Runs great	62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 81/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	33.0 GB	24.0 GB	3.6 tok/s	Slowheavy RAM offload	62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 51/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab) Original weights (opens in a new tab)

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

Other hardware that runs it

62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Q8_0 · 42.6 tok/s · Runs great
62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Q8_0 · 39.6 tok/s · Runs great
60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Q5_K_M · 46.1 tok/s · Runs great
60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Q5_K_M · 50.5 tok/s · Runs great
60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Q5_K_M · 61.5 tok/s · Runs great
60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 82/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Q5_K_M · 65.9 tok/s · Runs great

Quick answers

How much memory does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B need on the RX 7900 XTX 24GB?

At Q6_K it needs about 15.5 GB. The RX 7900 XTX 24GB has 24.0 GB usable.

How fast is DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B on the RX 7900 XTX 24GB?

About 47.7 tok/s at Q6_K, an estimate from the hardware’s memory bandwidth and the size of the model.

Which quantization of DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B should I use on the RX 7900 XTX 24GB?

Q6_K. Of the versions that fit, it is the one that runs best; when two run equally well, the check prefers the higher-rated one.

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.