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HomeCan I run it?R1 Distill 7BR1 Distill 7B on an Arc B580

Yes. R1 Distill 7B at Q8_0 needs about 10.3 GB, and the Intel Arc B580 has 12.0 GB usable at a ~4k context.

Can I run R1 Distill 7B on an Arc B580?

R1 Distill 7B at Q8_0 needs about 10.3 GB, and the Intel Arc B580 has 12.0 GB usable. That figure is 12 GB of VRAM on the spec sheet, of which 12.0 GB is usable for weights and cache, at 456 GB/s memory bandwidth. A 7B DeepSeek-R1 distill on Qwen. It is a reasoning-tuned small model, not the full 671B R1. These are estimates from our formula, not measured benchmarks.

Quant that fits
Q8_0 Fits with headroom
Memory needed
10.3 GB at Q8_0, ~4k context
Usable VRAM
12.0 GB of 12 GB VRAM
Est. tokens/sec
34–48 estimate

DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B · Intel Arc B580 · Everything this machine runs · Q4 vs Q8 vs FP16

Memory at each quant

QuantNeed vs 12.0 GBVerdict
Q4_K_M6.3 GBQ4Fits
Q8_010.3 GBQ8Fits
FP1618.5 GBFP16Won’t fit

Estimated tokens per second

Estimate: 34–48 tokens/sec at Q8_0. This is a bandwidth-derived range, not a bench. Efficiency is a 60–85% GPU band from How we calculate.

Context headroom

At Q8_0, this machine has headroom out to about 32k tokens under our KV estimate. Longer chats need more memory for the cache. Figures assume an FP16 KV cache.

Context headroom for R1 Distill 7B on an Arc B580 at Q8_0
ContextKV cache (FP16)Total at Q8_0Verdict
4k0.2 GB10.3 GBFits
8k0.5 GB10.5 GBFits
16k0.9 GB11.0 GBTight
32k1.9 GB11.9 GBTight
64k3.8 GB13.8 GBWon’t fit
128k7.5 GB17.6 GBWon’t fit

From the model’s config. Try other sizes in the VRAM calculator or see the context length guide.

What to do instead

Other hardware for R1 Distill 7B

Other models on an Arc B580

Quick answers

Can I run R1 Distill 7B on an Arc B580?
Yes. R1 Distill 7B at Q8_0 needs about 10.3 GB, and the Intel Arc B580 has 12.0 GB usable.
How much VRAM does R1 Distill 7B need?
About 6.3 GB at Q4_K_M, 10.3 GB at Q8_0 and 18.5 GB at FP16, estimated for a ~4k context.
How fast is R1 Distill 7B on an Arc B580?
Our estimate is 34–48 tokens per second at Q8_0. It is not a measured benchmark.
What context length can I use?
At Q8_0, our KV estimate supports up to about 32k tokens before the cache pushes the total over usable memory.

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