Best GPU for Local AI Translation

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated July 21, 2026

Ranked for translation and multilingual work: Translating between languages and working in a language other than English.

Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

20 GB VRAM at 800 GB/s. It runs 69 of the models that qualify for this workload; the strongest is Qwen 3.6 27B at an estimated 31.6 tokens/sec.

The picks

	GPU	VRAM	MSRP	Models that fit	Best model it runs	Est. speed
Best overall	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT	20 GB	$899	69	Qwen 3.6 27B	~31.6 tok/s
Best value	Intel Arc B570	10 GB	$219	56	GLM-4.7 9B	~42.7 tok/s
Budget pick	Intel Arc B570	10 GB	$219	56	GLM-4.7 9B	~42.7 tok/s
Most memory	NVIDIA DGX Spark	128 GB	$4,699	92	Qwen 3.5 122B-A10B (MoE)	~25.8 tok/s

GPU	Score	VRAM	MSRP	Models fit	Est. speed	Tok/s per watt	Cost per model
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT	55.6	20 GB	$899	69	~31.6	0.1	$13
Intel Arc B570	54.8	10 GB	$219	56	~42.7	0.28	$4
Intel Arc B580	51.1	12 GB	$249	57	~50.3	0.26	$4
AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395	50.8	96 GB	$1,999	92	~24.3	0.2	$22
NVIDIA DGX Spark	50.5	128 GB	$4,699	92	~25.8	0.17	$51
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060	49.5	8 GB	$299	46	~49.5	0.34	$7
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT	49	16 GB	$499	64	~45.9	0.17	$8
AMD Radeon RX 9070	48.8	16 GB	$549	64	~47	0.21	$9
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT	48.1	16 GB	$599	64	~52	0.24	$9
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB)	47.2	12 GB	$329	57	~40.6	0.24	$6
NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation	47.1	48 GB	$6,799	84	~15.8	0.05	$81
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti	45.5	16 GB	$749	64	~63.1	0.21	$12

GPUs are scored on four axes: capability (45%), speed (30%), value (20%) and efficiency (5%), each normalised across the whole ranking.
Capability means the intrinsic strength of the best model the card can hold — not how many models fit, and not how fast it streams a small one.
Speed is capped at 40 tok/s: past that, more throughput does not change how the model feels to use.
Apple Silicon is excluded from this ranking. Those entries price a whole computer and rate a chip's package power, so on price-per-capability and performance-per-watt they would beat every add-in card by construction. Apple hardware is covered on the macOS platform page instead.
Split roughly evenly between reasoning and creative weight, since translation is simultaneously a fidelity and a fluency problem. Multilingual `bestFor` tagging carries more signal here than anywhere else, so the tag bonus frequently decides ranking between otherwise comparable models.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT — 20 GB of VRAM runs 69 qualifying models, the strongest being Qwen 3.6.

The Intel Arc B570 at $219, which runs 56 qualifying models.

8 GB is the entry point at which a model for this workload will run at all. More memory buys a stronger model, not just a faster one.