How Much VRAM Do You Need for AI Video?

Updated October 14, 2026 · Figures calculated live from our model data

Video models are image models with time added: the latent grows with every frame, so activations, not just weights, decide memory. Wan 2.2 TI2V 5B fits on 12 GB with FP8 weights, Wan 2.2 A14B (T2V / I2V) and LTX-2 want 16–24 GB, and all of them need tiled VAE decoding.

Peak VRAM at default settings

With model swapping and tiled VAE decoding, at each model's default resolution and frame count.

Resolution and length multiply memory

Latent tokens scale with width × height × frames, so doubling resolution in each direction quadruples activation memory. For Wan 2.2 A14B (T2V / I2V) in FP8:

How to fit video models on smaller cards

1. Quantize weights: FP8 or GGUF Q5–Q8 for the transformer, FP8 for the text encoder.
2. Swap blocks: ComfyUI wrappers such as WanVideoWrapper can keep some transformer blocks in system RAM ("block swap"), trading speed for memory.
3. Tile the VAE: essential for video; untiled decoding of a 720p clip can exceed the transformer's memory.
4. Generate short, then extend: render 3–5 second clips and chain or interpolate frames.
5. Use the 5B model at 720p: Wan 2.2 TI2V 5B has a high-compression VAE that keeps token counts low.

Which GPU for video?

Video generation is compute-heavy as well as memory-heavy, so NVIDIA cards with fast tensor cores lead. An RTX 3090 24GB or RTX 4090 24GB is the practical minimum for comfortable 720p work; an RTX 5090 32GB adds headroom for longer clips. Macs and AMD cards work but take much longer per clip.

Model by model

• Wan 2.2 TI2V 5B: text-to-video and image-to-video at 720p. The best starting point on 12–16 GB cards.
• Wan 2.2 A14B: two 14B expert models, one for early and one for late denoising steps. Higher quality; only one expert is in memory at a time.
• LTX-2: generates video and matching audio together, with a highly compressed latent that keeps token counts low.
• HunyuanVideo: an earlier 13B model with a large community of LoRAs.

Time per clip

Video generation is slow even on fast cards. A five-second 720p clip can take several minutes on an RTX 4090 24GB, and much longer with block swapping on smaller cards. Speed-up LoRAs that cut the number of steps (often called lightning or distilled LoRAs) reduce time far more than any hardware change, at some cost to motion quality.

Frames, length and frame rate

Wan 2.2 generates at 16–24 frames per second, so 81 frames is about 3–5 seconds. Each extra second adds latent frames and activation memory. The VAE compresses four frames into one latent frame for Wan and eight for LTX-2, which is why LTX-2 can handle more frames for the same memory.

Recommended starting settings

Check other combinations with the image and video VRAM calculator.