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Can the BeagleBone AI-64 (4 GB) run Qwen3 8B?

42Fair quality (C) · 42 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 5/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Qwen3 8B needs about 5.3 GB even at Q2_K; the BeagleBone AI-64 (4 GB) has 2.8 GB usable.

Download Qwen3 8B

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 qwen3:8b

Quantized files · GGUF

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

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-8B-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/Qwen/Qwen3-8B-GGUF

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-8B (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

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

github.com/QwenLM/Qwen3 (opens in a new tab)

git clone https://github.com/QwenLM/Qwen3

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

How it’s rated

Quality 42Fair quality (C) · 42 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 5/100 (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 BeagleBone AI-64 (4 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.5.7 / 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 score5.7 / 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 BeagleBone AI-64 (4 GB)

Quant Memory needed Available Speed Runs Quality Download
Q2_K 5.3 GB 2.8 GB — Won't run 42Fair quality (C) · 42 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 5/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q3_K_M 6.0 GB 2.8 GB — Won't run 50Fair quality (C) · 50 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q4_K_M 7.0 GB 2.8 GB — Won't run 57Good quality (B) · 57 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 7/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
Q5_K_M 7.8 GB 2.8 GB — Won't run 58Good quality (B) · 58 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 7/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
Q6_K 8.7 GB 2.8 GB — Won't run 59Good quality (B) · 59 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
Q8_0 10.7 GB 2.8 GB — Won't run 60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
F16 18.4 GB 2.8 GB — Won't run 60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (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

Models that do run on the BeagleBone AI-64 (4 GB)

Quick answers

How much memory does Qwen3 8B need on the BeagleBone AI-64 4GB?

Even at Q2_K it needs about 5.3 GB; the BeagleBone AI-64 4GB has 2.8 GB usable.

What can the BeagleBone AI-64 4GB run instead?

MiniCPM5 2B, LFM3 1.7B and Spark-X2.6 4B run best on it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

What hardware can run Qwen3 8B?

RX 9070 XT 16GB, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16GB and RTX 4080 SUPER 16GB run it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

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.

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