Best local AI models for AMD R5 M420

4 GB DDR3. At a 4k context, 81 of the 233 models in our catalog with verified parameter counts fit fully, up to Lumina-Next / Lumina-Image 2.0 at 5B parameters.

Check your own machine against every model →

The largest models that fit fully

The 30 largest of the 81 models that fit; every smaller model in the catalog fits too. Best quant means the highest quality compression whose weights and 4k context both sit inside the memory.

ModelParametersBest quant that fitsMemory used at 4k
Lumina-Next / Lumina-Image 2.05BQ4_K_M3.7 GB
CogVideoX 2B / 5B5BQ4_K_M3.7 GB
DeepSeek-VL24.5BQ5_K_M3.8 GB
DeepFloyd IF4.3BQ5_K_M3.7 GB
Phi-3.5-vision4.2BQ5_K_M3.6 GB
Qwen3 4B4BQ6_K3.9 GB
Gemma 3 4B4BQ6_K3.9 GB
Gemma 4 E4B4BQ6_K3.9 GB
MiniCPM 3 4B4BQ6_K3.9 GB
Danube 3 4B4BQ6_K3.9 GB
Fish Speech 1.5 / OpenAudio S14BQ6_K3.9 GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.8BQ6_K3.7 GB
Phi-3.5 Mini3.8BQ6_K3.7 GB
OmniGen / OmniGen23.8BQ6_K3.7 GB
SD Cascade (Würstchen v3)3.6BQ6_K3.5 GB
SDXL Turbo3.5BQ6_K3.4 GB
SDXL Lightning3.5BQ6_K3.4 GB
ACE-Step3.5BQ6_K3.4 GB
MusicGen small/medium/large3.3BQ6_K3.2 GB
SmolLM3 3B3BQ8_03.8 GB
Replit Code v1.5 3B3BQ8_03.8 GB
Kandinsky 3.13BQ8_03.8 GB
Voxtral Mini / Small3BQ8_03.8 GB
Orpheus TTS3BQ8_03.8 GB
Higgs Audio v23BQ8_03.8 GB
Allegro2.8BQ8_03.6 GB
Open-Sora Plan2.7BQ8_03.4 GB
LFM2 1.2B / 2.6B2.6BQ8_03.3 GB
Playground v2.52.6BQ8_03.3 GB
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium2.5BQ8_03.2 GB

Close, but only with CPU offload

These need more than the card holds at their smallest practical quant, so part of the model runs from system memory (figures assume 32 GB of it). They work, several times slower.

ModelParametersMemory at FP8 / optimizedSystem RAM at 4k
Stable Diffusion XL3.417B4.1 GB needed6.1 GB
Phi-3 Mini3.8B4.4 GB needed6.4 GB
Phi-4-multimodal5.6B4.1 GB needed6.1 GB
Magicoder-S-DS 6.7B6.7B4.9 GB needed6.9 GB
Mistral 7B7B5.7 GB needed7.7 GB
Qwen2.5 0.5B / 1.5B / 3B / 7B7B5.1 GB needed7.1 GB
OLMo 2 1B / 7B7B5.1 GB needed7.1 GB
Falcon 3 1B / 3B / 7B7B5.1 GB needed7.1 GB
Command R7B7B5.1 GB needed7.1 GB
OpenHermes 2.57B5.1 GB needed7.1 GB

How to read this

The AMD Radeon R5 M420 is an entry level graphics card equipped with 4 GB of DDR3 dedicated video memory. This memory capacity dictates the size of the artificial intelligence models you can run locally. Because DDR3 memory has lower bandwidth than modern GDDR standards, keeping the entire model inside the video memory is crucial for maintaining acceptable generation speeds.

The best quantization column shows the optimal compression format for each model. Quantization reduces the precision of model weights to save space. For this hardware, models under 3.8B parameters can run at high quality Q8_0 or Q6_K quantizations. Larger models like Lumina-Next 5B, CogVideoX 5B, and DeepSeek-VL2 4.5B require a tighter Q4_K_M or Q5_K_M quantization to fit within the 3.7 GB to 3.8 GB video memory limit.

When a model size exceeds the 4 GB video memory limit, you must use CPU offload. This technique splits the model layers between your graphics card and your system RAM. For example, running Mistral 7B or Qwen2.5 7B at Q4_K_M requires 5.1 GB to 5.7 GB of memory. This setup uses about 7.1 GB to 7.7 GB of system RAM assuming a standard 32 GB system RAM configuration.

CPU offload allows you to run larger models like Falcon 3 7B, Command R7B, and OpenHermes 2.5 on your system. However, this process comes with a performance cost. Moving data between the DDR3 video memory and system RAM over the system bus slows down the generation speed significantly compared to running fully on the graphics card.

You must also consider the context window when loading these models. The listed memory usage figures assume a standard 4k context window. If you increase the context length to process longer documents or chat histories, the memory usage will grow. This extra memory demand can push a fitting model over the 4 GB limit and trigger slow CPU offload.