Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B vs Qwen 2.5 VL 7B

The two models at a glance

About Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B

IBM's edge-class hybrid MoE with 7B total and only 1B active parameters — Apache 2.0 licensed and built for embedded and low-cost serving. Strengths: Extremely low compute cost per token via 1B active params, Apache 2.0 license with no commercial strings attached, 128k context handled efficiently thanks to hybrid Mamba-2, Tiny memory footprint suits edge and serverless deploys.

About Qwen 2.5 VL 7B

A 7B vision-language model from Alibaba with state-of-the-art results in its class, scoring 95.7 on DocVQA. Handles hour-long video, bounding-box grounding, and multilingual OCR. Strengths: State-of-the-art vision performance at the 7B tier, Excellent multilingual OCR, Long video input (over 1 hour), Apache 2.0.

How they compare

Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B comes from IBM and Qwen 2.5 VL 7B from Alibaba, they belong to the Granite and Qwen families respectively. This comparison is built entirely from structured specs — parameter count, VRAM by quantization, context window, license, and published benchmark scores — so the verdict below reflects measurable differences rather than marketing claims.

Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Qwen 2.5 VL 7B share the same 7B parameter class. At Q4, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B fits in about 4 GB of VRAM versus 6 GB for the other — a 2 GB difference that matters on consumer GPUs.

The two models target different sweet spots: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B is tuned for chat, general, moe, small, while Qwen 2.5 VL 7B leans toward vision, chat, general. Match the model to your dominant workload rather than to raw size.

On a typical mid-range GPU, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B pushes roughly 180 tokens/sec versus 25, so it is the more responsive choice for interactive or high-volume use.

Memory, quantization & throughput

Across quantization levels, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B requires Q4 ≈ 4 GB, Q5 ≈ 5 GB, Q8 ≈ 7 GB, FP16 ≈ 14 GB, while Qwen 2.5 VL 7B requires Q4 ≈ 6 GB, Q5 ≈ 7 GB, Q8 ≈ 10 GB, FP16 ≈ 18 GB. In practice Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B fits an 8 GB card at Q4, so plan your GPU around the Q4 or Q5 figure unless you specifically need the higher fidelity of Q8 or FP16.

Without a GPU, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B needs roughly 8 GB of system RAM to run on CPU and Qwen 2.5 VL 7B about 10 GB — workable for offline use but far slower than GPU inference. On a mid-range GPU you can expect on the order of 180 tokens/sec from Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and 25 from Qwen 2.5 VL 7B, scaling up to 350 and 60 tokens/sec on high-end hardware.

Which fits your GPU

Here is the highest-quality quantization of each model that fits common GPU memory budgets, so you can match Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B or Qwen 2.5 VL 7B to the card you actually own:

• On a 8 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at Q8 (7 GB); Qwen 2.5 VL 7B runs at Q5 (7 GB).
• On a 12 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at Q8 (7 GB); Qwen 2.5 VL 7B runs at Q8 (10 GB).
• On a 16 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at FP16 (14 GB); Qwen 2.5 VL 7B runs at Q8 (10 GB).
• On a 24 GB GPU: Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B runs at FP16 (14 GB); Qwen 2.5 VL 7B runs at FP16 (18 GB).

Benchmark scores

Reported benchmarks for Qwen 2.5 VL 7B: DocVQA 95.7, ChartQA 87.3, OCRBench 86.4.

Bottom line: which should you pick?

• Pick Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B if your workload is moe, small.
• Pick Qwen 2.5 VL 7B if your workload is vision.

Which GPU should you buy to run Qwen 2.5 VL 7B?

To run Qwen 2.5 VL 7B locally at Q4, you need ~6 GB of VRAM. The best value for this is a RTX 5060 (8 GB VRAM).

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Qwen 2.5 VL 7B?

The headline differences: both are 7B models. Below we break down VRAM by quantization, benchmark scores, and a use-case verdict so you can pick the right one.

Can Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Qwen 2.5 VL 7B run on a 24 GB GPU?

At a Q4 quantization, Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B needs about 4 GB of VRAM and fits comfortably on a 24 GB GPU; Qwen 2.5 VL 7B needs about 6 GB and fits comfortably on a 24 GB GPU. Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B is the lighter option for tight VRAM budgets.

What licenses do Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B and Qwen 2.5 VL 7B use?

Granite 4.0 H-Tiny 7B-A1B is licensed under Apache 2.0 and Qwen 2.5 VL 7B under Apache 2.0.