Gemma 4 E2B runs 9 t/s on i5 6500, beats GPT-3.5 and rivals GPT-4
A 4B parameter model outperforms ChatGPT 3.5 on a decade-old CPU
Deep Dive
Reddit user /u/InsideYork reports running a model on an Intel i5 6500, getting 9 tokens per second. They say it's really fast, the output is a lot better than ChatGPT 3.5, and maybe as good as ChatGPT 4, but they haven't used 4 much. They also used Qwen 3.5 4B before this and call it amazing.
Key Points
- Gemma 4 E2B runs at 9 tokens/second on an i5 6500 CPU with no GPU
- Output quality exceeds GPT-3.5 and approaches GPT-4 according to user
- Qwen 3.5 4B also praised; community recommends Phi-3, Llama 3.2 3B for low-end hardware
Why It Matters
Small local models now rival GPT-3.5/4 on old hardware, enabling affordable, private AI for everyone.