Local AI enthusiasts target RTX 5070 as budget king

The 12GB VRAM limit is the new "mid-range" bottleneck, forcing a hard trade-off between model intelligence and context window. Llama 4 Scout (8B) and Celeste 12B are the new benchmarks for speed and creative prose on consumer hardware. Native FP4 (4-bit) support in the Blackwell architecture makes quantization the default, drastically improving inference efficiency. Music AI has matured into full-track synthesis (ACE-Step) rather than just MIDI loops, though 12GB is tight for the highest-fidelity outputs. 12GB is sufficient for a 32k context on a 14B model, but requires Flash Attention 2 and careful background VRAM management. "Local first" tools like NovelCrafter and SillyTavern have become the standard interfaces for serious creative workflows.