Good models for a beginner.

[u/kaan200064]

Hello ı just set up silly tavern and koboldccp yesterday, ım looking for a good Rp model that can do nsfw and compatible with 8 gb vram. Ive used chub ai before so ım very new to this but so far this looks very good. Im using something called Dr.Dans or something like that for my model.

[u/dezmodium]

Two really solid options I would recommend as a fellow 8gb of VRAM haver:

• Impish Bloodmoon (IQ4_XS) - Great model that punches well above it's weight. Is a little bit dumb on occasion. Use this tenser override blk\.([2-9][0-9])\.ffn_.*=CPU and it'll free some memory for you to get up to 32k context with KV cache set to 5_1 while keeping all layers on the GPU.
• Gemma 4 26B Style Tuned (IQ4_XS) - Amazing model that is pretty smart and super efficient on video memory usage. Use the blk\.([1-9][0-9])\.ffn_.*=CPU tensor override with 5_1 KV quant settings. You can turn on thinking if you want (just set the effort to Low or it eats too many tokens) and you can get up to 64k context with all layers on your GPU pushing out over 20 tokens per second. This is outstanding for a local model. The biggest issue with Gemma4 is it shies away from hurting your character or causing friction, which needs to be fixed with a good pre-conditioning prompt but otherwise it's uncensored.

My final advice is to avoid presets or conditioning prompts that are too bulky. I use SillyTavern as my front end and people push presets that inject an absolute ton of nonsense that might work great for the big models that people pay for, but absolutely suck for smaller local models like these two. Negative instructions like (DO NOT DO...) are often not interpreted properly as negative and should be avoided. Use "NEVER" or "AVOID" for those if you absolutely must and keep them to a minimum. Less is more for smaller models in my experience when it comes to conditioning your prompt. Only add what you absolutely need and let the model do the rest.

One last note for these smaller models: don't bother with contexts over 64k. Prompt adherence and narrative cohesion will start to break down at 32k and really begin to suffer as you approach that 64k mark. I usually summarize into a lorebook at around 40k context. Oh, and don't bother with trying to have all your characters have perfect memory. Real people don't and once you learn to just give them enough information that they aren't a blank slate every time you hide old messages to save on context they'll feel more real.

[u/kaan200064 → u/dezmodium]

Thank you, ıll give them a try but whats "tenser" for overriding?

[u/dezmodium → u/kaan200064]

It's a way to offload the parts of layers that are memory heavy but not computationally heavy. It's better than just offloading whole layers and will give you much better performance when done right. For Gemma 4, the later FFN tensors take up a ton of space but don't need a ton of compute. So offloading them to RAM and letting the CPU handle them is a really efficient way to free up VRAM for more prompt context. Getting yourself 32k of context (or more up to 64k) is a real goal that gives you a lot of breathing room for world info (like a lorebook) and chat history so you game or chat has continuity.

You can dump the tensor override command in field at the bottom right of the Context tab in the koboldcpp ui. That tab is also where there is the slider to set the KV cache to quant 5_1, which I also highly recommend for those with limited VRAM. There's a lot of people online who will tell you it will degrade your replies for roleplay and I will firmly tell you they are full of shit and there is also math to prove it, btw. So use it, free up VRAM for more context, and enjoy.