The answer — one pick, priced
Get the
Intel Arc B580
$1 under your budget
The cheapest viable local-AI GPU — 12 GB GDDR6 at 62 tok/s on 8B models, faster than any NVIDIA card near this price, per 8 sources.
Some links earn us a commission — it never changes the pick. Winners are chosen before payouts are checked.
Fit ledger — need → measured evidence
■ The catch — co-equal billing, always
It tops out at 8B-14B models. The 12 GB VRAM won't fit the 27B-70B models that make local AI genuinely smart, its oneAPI/SYCL backend is less polished than CUDA, and stock is thin. This is a starter card, not a keeper.
Dealbreaker? Runner-up №1 (RTX 5060 Ti) adds 16 GB for 27B ↓
■ Every product has a catch. Verdicts that hide it are how bad buys happen.
Runners-up — if your needs differ
Adjacent verdicts — same method
Traps — this verdict avoids
Speed is not capability
The spec that decides which models you can run is VRAM, not clock speed. A slower 24 GB card runs 30B models a faster 12 GB card physically can't load. Size by VRAM first, bandwidth second.
MSRP is fiction
Street prices sit far above sticker — the RTX 5090 lists around $4,189 vs its $1,999 MSRP, and the 5070 Ti runs ~$1,074 vs $749. Check the live price, never the MSRP.
The non-CUDA tax
Every major framework — llama.cpp, vLLM, PyTorch — is built for NVIDIA CUDA first. AMD ROCm and Intel oneAPI work, but budget extra setup time and expect rough edges.
Provenance — 8 sources, dated
Winners are picked before affiliate payouts are checked, from the full research dossier at knowledgelib.io. Prices, stock and listings are re-verified monthly by an automated pipeline. Some links earn us a commission — it never changes the pick, and we say so here rather than in a footer you'd never read.