Best GPU for Local AI Vision

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated July 21, 2026

Ranked for vision and image understanding: Reading images, screenshots, charts and diagrams alongside text.

Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

24 GB VRAM at 960 GB/s. It runs 20 of the models that qualify for this workload; the strongest is Qwen 3.7 35B-A3B at an estimated 164.8 tokens/sec.

The picks

	GPU	VRAM	MSRP	Models that fit	Best model it runs	Est. speed
Best overall	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX	24 GB	$999	20	Qwen 3.7 35B-A3B	~164.8 tok/s
Best value	Intel Arc B570	10 GB	$219	11	Qwen 3.5 14B	~29.1 tok/s
Budget pick	Intel Arc B570	10 GB	$219	11	Qwen 3.5 14B	~29.1 tok/s
Most memory	NVIDIA DGX Spark	128 GB	$4,699	25	Qwen 3.5 72B	~4.5 tok/s

GPU	Score	VRAM	MSRP	Models fit	Est. speed	Tok/s per watt	Cost per model
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX	80.7	24 GB	$999	20	~164.8	0.46	$50
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090	79.1	24 GB	$1,499	20	~162.2	0.46	$75
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090	78.5	24 GB	$1,599	20	~169.9	0.38	$80
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090	77.5	32 GB	$1,999	20	~233	0.41	$100
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT	69.6	20 GB	$899	16	~28.6	0.09	$56
Intel Arc B580	64.7	12 GB	$249	12	~34.5	0.18	$21
Intel Arc B570	62.8	10 GB	$219	11	~29.1	0.19	$20
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT	59.7	16 GB	$499	13	~45.9	0.17	$38
AMD Radeon RX 9070	59.4	16 GB	$549	13	~47	0.21	$42
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070	59	12 GB	$549	12	~49.1	0.2	$46
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT	58.7	16 GB	$599	13	~52	0.24	$46
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070	57	12 GB	$599	12	~37.8	0.19	$50

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.
Vision capability is a hard gate — text-only models are excluded outright rather than penalised, so this ranking is drawn from a genuinely different candidate pool than every other workload here.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX — 24 GB of VRAM runs 20 qualifying models, the strongest being Qwen 3.7.

The Intel Arc B570 at $219, which runs 11 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.