Best graphics cards for local AI under £500
Ranked by what each one runs fully in memory at 32k context, with prices in the UK today.
In short
The top pick in the UK right now is the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, £499 at eBay: it runs gpt-oss 20B fully in memory at 32k context at about 33 tok/s (estimated). Ranked by the most capable open model each one runs fully in memory at 32k context and a usable speed, then by how many models it runs, then by speed on Qwen 3.8 27B, then by price.
Updated . Speeds are estimates; how they are worked out.
The list
Best first. Speeds are estimates est.
| # | Card | Memory | Price | Best model it runs at 32k | Models in memory | Qwen 3.8 27B | tok/s per £1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB | 16 GB | £499eBay | gpt-oss 20BMXFP433 tok/s | 6 | offload | – |
| 2 | Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB | £323eBay | Gemma 4 12BQ6_K21 tok/s | 10 | offload | – |
| 3 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB | 12 GB | £390eBay | Gemma 4 12BQ6_K21 tok/s | 10 | offload | – |
| 4 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB | 10 GB | £466eBay | Gemma 4 12BQ4_K_M59 tok/s | 5 | offload | – |
Questions
- What is the best graphics card for running AI models locally under £500?
- The top pick in the UK right now is the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, £499 at eBay: it runs gpt-oss 20B fully in memory at 32k context at about 33 tok/s (estimated).