Ternary Bonsai 27B — VRAM, Speed & Local Setup

Autor: Jakub Rusinowski · Ostatnia aktualizacja: 15 lipca 2026

Model libraryBonsai 27B → Ternary Bonsai 27B

The laptop build and recommended pick when you have the memory. Ternary {−1, 0, +1} weights at ~1.71 bits/weight land at 5.9 GB while keeping more than 95% of the FP16 baseline. PrismML reports MATH-500 99.20, AIME 2025 90.84, HumanEval+ 93.90 and LiveCodeBench 82.8, with tool-use and agentic ability largely intact (~74). Multimodal, 262K context, Apache 2.0. Ships as GGUF and MLX; also hosted on Together AI. Specs from launch coverage — verify on the Hugging Face model card.

Ternary Bonsai 27B needs about 17 GB of VRAM at Ternary (1.58-bit, ~1.71 bpw) — quantized weights plus framework overhead, before any KV cache. On Apple Silicon that figure comes out of unified memory.

Specifications

Parameters27 Billion
Context window262,144
ArchitectureQwen3.6-27B (multimodal), ternary weights
ProviderPrismML
LicenceApache 2.0
Specified atTernary (1.58-bit, ~1.71 bpw)
System RAM16 GB
Record updated2026-07-15

Licence

Apache-2.0commercial use permitted. Commercial use permitted. No usage restrictions beyond attribution.

VRAM and Speed by Quantization

Modelled on a reference NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB), with no KV cache (this record has no published architecture). Speed figures are ESTIMATES from the memory-bandwidth roofline described on the methodology page, not benchmarks we ran — rows marked measured come from published or reader-submitted runs. VRAM here includes the KV cache, so it reads higher than the headline figure above, which does not.

QuantWeightsVRAM neededEst. speedFit on 24 GB
Q2_K8.9 GB9.7 GB~66 tok/s (est.)Fits comfortably
Q3_K_M11.5 GB12.3 GB~54 tok/s (est.)Fits comfortably
Q4_K_M16.3 GB17.1 GB~40 tok/s (est.)Fits comfortably
Q5_K_M19.1 GB19.9 GB~35 tok/s (est.)Fits comfortably
Q6_K22.1 GB22.9 GB~31 tok/s (est.)Tight fit
Q8_028.7 GB29.5 GB~4 tok/s (est.)Offloads to system RAM (slow)
F1654.0 GB54.8 GB~2 tok/s (est.)Offloads to system RAM (slow)

Want the memory numbers alone, at every quantization level and your own context length? Use the Ternary Bonsai 27B VRAM calculator.

Buy This HardwareAMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB — 20 GB VRAM · 315 W board powerDeploy in the Cloud NowRTX 4090 on RunPod — from $0.34/hr · rate checked 2026-07

or compare on Vast.ai from $0.35/hr (typical low · varies)

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Recommended GPU

The cheapest catalogued GPU that runs Ternary Bonsai 27B is the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (20 GB).

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AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB
20 GB VRAM · 315 W board power
Ceny w 2026 są niestabilne — sprawdź aktualną ofertę.
Sprawdź cenę na Amazon

How to Run Ternary Bonsai 27B

Install Ollama, then run:

ollama run bonsai-27b

Weights on Hugging Face: prism-ml/Ternary-Bonsai-27B-gguf.

Published Benchmark Scores

Quality scores as published by the model's authors or an independent evaluator — not throughput, and not measured by us.

BenchmarkScoreProvenance
MATH-50099.2 %vendor-claimed · PrismML (launch)
AIME 202590.84 %vendor-claimed · PrismML (launch)
HumanEval+93.9 %vendor-claimed · PrismML (launch)
LiveCodeBench82.8 %vendor-claimed · PrismML (launch)
Tool-use (agentic)74.01 %vendor-claimed · PrismML (launch)
Vision65.19 %vendor-claimed · PrismML (launch)

Best for: laptop, on device, multimodal, reasoning, coding, agents.

Can I Run Ternary Bonsai 27B on My GPU?

Other Bonsai 27B Sizes

Ternary Bonsai 27B — Frequently Asked Questions

How much VRAM does Ternary Bonsai 27B need?
About 17 GB at Ternary (1.58-bit, ~1.71 bpw) — quantized weights plus framework overhead, before any KV cache. The cache grows with context length and is added on top; the table above folds it in. Apple Silicon counts unified memory toward the same figure.
Does Ternary Bonsai 27B run on an RTX 4090 (24 GB)?
Yes. Ternary Bonsai 27B needs about 17 GB at Ternary (1.58-bit, ~1.71 bpw), inside a 24 GB card, at an estimated 40 tokens/sec.
How do I run Ternary Bonsai 27B locally?
Install Ollama and run `ollama run bonsai-27b`. That pulls the weights and starts a local OpenAI-compatible endpoint; after the download nothing leaves the machine.
What other sizes does Bonsai 27B come in?
1-bit Bonsai 27B (17 GB), Ternary Bonsai 27B (17 GB). Every size shares the family's training and licence; the larger ones score higher and need proportionally more memory.

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