What runs on a gaming laptop.

How much memory your laptop GPU has.

The same name means different things on a laptop. An RTX 5070 Laptop has 8 GB, not the desktop card’s 12 [1].

The RTX 4060 Laptop GPU is the second most common GPU on Steam in August 2026.

Set up ComfyUI on a laptop.

1. 1

   Plug in and pick performance mode

   On battery, laptop GPUs drop to a fraction of their power. Plug in, and choose the maker’s performance or turbo mode. The same chip also ships at very different power limits in different laptops, which is why two “RTX 4060 laptops” can differ a lot.

2. 2

   Make ComfyUI use the NVIDIA GPU

   Windows can run Python on the integrated graphics. In Settings › System › Display › Graphics, add the python.exe ComfyUI runs with and set it to High performance. ComfyUI’s console names the GPU it uses when it starts.

3. 3

   Install ComfyUI

   ComfyUI Desktop or the portable NVIDIA build, with a current NVIDIA driver from NVIDIA rather than the laptop maker’s old one.

4. 4

   Leave the memory flags alone

   Since March 2026, ComfyUI manages graphics memory by itself on NVIDIA cards. It calls this Dynamic VRAM: model weights stream into the card as they’re needed, and the rest waits in system RAM without going to the pagefile. It’s on by default in current ComfyUI, on Windows and Linux (not WSL).

   That changes the old advice. --lowvram now does nothing while Dynamic VRAM is on, and --novram, --highvram and --gpu-only switch it off. --normalvram is gone, and an old shortcut that still passes it stops ComfyUI with unrecognized arguments.

5. 5

   Stop the silent slowdown

   On Windows, the NVIDIA driver can quietly borrow system RAM when the card is full. Task Manager shows it as Shared GPU memory, and a render that would have stopped with an error crawls on, many times slower, instead. To get the error instead: NVIDIA Control Panel › Manage 3D settings › Program Settings, add the python.exe ComfyUI runs with, and set CUDA - Sysmem Fallback Policy to Prefer No Sysmem Fallback. Restart ComfyUI.

6. 6

   Pagefile for 16 GB laptops

   Models that don’t fit the card pass through system RAM, and Windows needs pagefile room while it loads them. Leave the pagefile on System managed size on your fastest SSD. If ComfyUI stops with The paging file is too small for this operation to complete, set a custom size of 32 GB or more under System › About › Advanced system settings › Performance › Advanced › Virtual memory.

What runs on a laptop.

Match the memory to the desktop guides above. For the common 8 GB laptop:

• SDXLfp16 · 6.9 GBFits

  Peaked at 5.6 GB on an RTX 4060 Laptop, without any flags.

• Flux.2 Klein 4Bfp8 · 4.1 GBFits

  4 steps.

• Z-Image Turboint8 · 6.2 GBFits

  nvfp4 (4.5 GB) on RTX 50 laptops.

• Wan 2.2 5BGGUF Q5 to Q8 · 3.8 to 5.4 GBTight

  Short clips at around 480p.

• Krea 2, Flux.1 Devfp8 · 12 to 13 GBOffloads

  Needs 32 GB of system RAM; most laptops have 16.

• Wan 2.2 14Bfp8 · 2 × 14.3 GBOffloads

  32 GB of RAM or more.

How long it takes.

The desktop RTX 4060 took 15.9 s for the same SDXL job [3], so a well-cooled laptop keeps up on models that fit. The Flux figure shows what 16 GB of RAM does to a model that doesn’t.

16 GB of RAM.

Most gaming laptops ship with 16 GB, and many can take 32. It matters more than the GPU once a model offloads. With 16 GB:

• Stay with the models marked Fits.
• Expect The paging file is too small for this operation to complete on big files; a 4 GB laptop with 16 GB hit it on Flux Schnell fp8 [5]. Raise the pagefile.
• Close the browser while a big model loads.

6 GB laptops.

An RTX 3060 Laptop or 4050 Laptop has 6 GB. SDXL runs, best as a Lightning or DMD2 checkpoint at 4 to 8 steps. Flux.2 Klein 4B in fp8 can spill into shared memory and crawl; one owner of a 4 GB card saw exactly that while Z-Image and Wan 2.2 5B ran fine [6]. Z-Image Turbo as a GGUF Q4 is the gentler start.

When it goes wrong.

ComfyUI says it runs on Intel or AMD integrated graphics

Windows picked the wrong GPU. Set python.exe to High performance under Settings › System › Display › Graphics and restart ComfyUI.

torch.OutOfMemoryError: CUDA out of memory

The model, the image size and the batch didn’t fit together. Generate one image at a time, go down a size, or use the fp8, int8 or GGUF file. When it fails at the very end, the VAE decode ran out: swap VAE Decode for VAE Decode (Tiled). For video, fewer frames help more than a smaller size.

The paging file is too small for this operation to complete. (os error 1455)

Windows ran out of virtual memory while loading a big file. Give the pagefile 32 GB or more, or add RAM.

It suddenly got much slower

The card is full and Windows is borrowing system RAM. Check Shared GPU memory in Task Manager. Close other GPU apps, lower the size, and set Prefer No Sysmem Fallback so it fails fast instead.

unrecognized arguments: --normalvram

An old launch flag. Remove it from the shortcut or the .bat file. Current ComfyUI doesn’t need memory flags on NVIDIA.

The first image takes minutes, the next ones don’t

The first run reads the model from disk. Later runs start warm. An SSD shortens the first one; with 16 GB of RAM it can stay slow, since the model gets pushed out between runs.

Questions.

Sources: [1] RTX 50 laptop GPUs, Tom’s Hardware, [2] SDXL on an RTX 4060 Laptop, lilting channel, [3] SDXL GPU benchmark thread, ComfyUI discussion #2970, [4] Flux on an RTX 4060 Laptop, ComfyUI issue #4461, [5] Paging file error on a 16 GB laptop, ComfyUI issue #7550, [6] Flux.2 Klein spilling into shared memory on 4 GB, ComfyUI issue #11913, [7] Steam Hardware Survey, August 2026, [8] System memory fallback, NVIDIA.