bartowski/granite-4.2-30b-GGUF overview

---

quantized_by: bartowski

pipeline_tag: text-generation

language:

• en
• de
• es
• fr
• ja
• pt
• ar
• cs
• it
• ko
• nl
• zh

license: apache-2.0

base_model: ibm-granite/granite-4.2-30b

tags:

• granite
• granite-4.2
• reasoning
• thinking
• tool-calling
• ibm

base_model_relation: quantized

---

Llamacpp imatrix Quantizations of granite-4.2-30b by ibm-granite

Using <a href="https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/">llama.cpp</a> release <a href="https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/releases/tag/b10603">b10603</a> for quantization.

Original model: https://huggingface.co/ibm-granite/granite-4.2-30b

Model details:

• Parameter count: 29B
• Input support: text
• Speculative decoding: no
• imatrix: yes - details

How to run

Prompt format

<|im_start|>system
{system_prompt}<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
{prompt}<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
<think>

Don't know which to choose? Grab Q4_K_M (18.03GB) - usually a good mix of size and performance. Download instructions available here

Available files:

| Filename | Quant type | File Size | Split | Description |

| -------- | ---------- | --------- | ----- | ----------- |

| granite-4.2-30b-bf16.gguf | bf16 | 58.56GB | true | Full BF16 weights. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q8_0.gguf | Q8_0 | 31.11GB | false | Extremely high quality, generally unneeded but max available quant. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q6_K_L.gguf | Q6_K_L | 24.71GB | false | Uses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Very high quality, near perfect, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q6_K.gguf | Q6_K | 24.51GB | false | Very high quality, near perfect, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q5_K_L.gguf | Q5_K_L | 21.28GB | false | Uses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. High quality, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q5_K_M.gguf | Q5_K_M | 21.03GB | false | High quality, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q5_K_S.gguf | Q5_K_S | 20.26GB | false | High quality, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q4_1.gguf | Q4_1 | 18.49GB | false | Legacy format, similar performance to Q4_K_S but with improved tokens/watt on Apple silicon. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q4_K_L.gguf | Q4_K_L | 18.33GB | false | Uses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Good quality, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q4_K_M.gguf | Q4_K_M | 18.03GB | false | Good quality, default size for most use cases, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q4_K_S.gguf | Q4_K_S | 16.87GB | false | Slightly lower quality with more space savings, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ4_NL.gguf | IQ4_NL | 16.79GB | false | Similar to IQ4_XS, but slightly larger. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q4_0.gguf | Q4_0 | 16.79GB | false | Legacy format, kept for compatibility with older tools. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ4_XS.gguf | IQ4_XS | 15.91GB | false | Decent quality, smaller than Q4_K_S with similar performance, recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q3_K_XL.gguf | Q3_K_XL | 15.74GB | false | Uses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Lower quality but usable, good for low RAM availability. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q3_K_L.gguf | Q3_K_L | 15.38GB | false | Lower quality but usable, good for low RAM availability. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q3_K_M.gguf | Q3_K_M | 14.36GB | false | Low quality. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ3_M.gguf | IQ3_M | 13.31GB | false | Medium-low quality, new method with decent performance comparable to Q3_K_M. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q3_K_S.gguf | Q3_K_S | 12.96GB | false | Low quality, not recommended. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ3_XS.gguf | IQ3_XS | 12.39GB | false | Lower quality, new method with decent performance, slightly better than Q3_K_S. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ3_XXS.gguf | IQ3_XXS | 11.69GB | false | Lower quality, new method with decent performance, comparable to Q3 quants. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q2_K_L.gguf | Q2_K_L | 11.52GB | false | Uses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Very low quality but surprisingly usable. |

| granite-4.2-30b-Q2_K.gguf | Q2_K | 11.12GB | false | Very low quality but surprisingly usable. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ2_M.gguf | IQ2_M | 10.83GB | false | Relatively low quality, uses SOTA techniques to be surprisingly usable. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ2_S.gguf | IQ2_S | 10.12GB | false | Low quality, uses SOTA techniques to be usable. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ2_XS.gguf | IQ2_XS | 9.76GB | false | Low quality, uses SOTA techniques to be usable. |

| granite-4.2-30b-IQ2_XXS.gguf | IQ2_XXS | 9.03GB | false | Very low quality, uses SOTA techniques to be usable. |

Download a specific file:

hf download bartowski/granite-4.2-30b-GGUF --include "granite-4.2-30b-Q4_K_M.gguf" --local-dir ./

Downloading using the Hugging Face CLI

<details>

<summary>Click to view download instructions</summary>

First, make sure you have the Hugging Face CLI installed:

pip install -U "huggingface_hub[cli]"

Download a specific file:

hf download bartowski/granite-4.2-30b-GGUF --include "granite-4.2-30b-Q4_K_M.gguf" --local-dir ./

The files marked true in the Split column above are stored as multiple parts in a folder. To download all the parts to a local folder, run:

hf download bartowski/granite-4.2-30b-GGUF --include "granite-4.2-30b-bf16/*" --local-dir ./

You can either specify a new local-dir (granite-4.2-30b-bf16) or download them all in place (./)

</details>

How to run

These quants run with llama.cpp - installable in one line via llama.app:

curl -LsSf https://llama.app/install.sh | sh
llama-server -hf bartowski/granite-4.2-30b-GGUF:Q4_K_M

llama-server includes a built-in chat web UI, served at http://localhost:8080 by default.

These quants were made with llama.cpp release b10603 - if this model's architecture is newly supported, you'll need that release or newer to run them.

They also work in: LM Studio · koboldcpp · ramalama · Jan AI · Text Generation Web UI · LoLLMs · Atomic Chat

imatrix

All quants made using imatrix option, with a calibration corpus rendered through this model's own chat template. The corpus pairs plain prose with tool-calling and reasoning conversations (corpus source data), encoded exactly as this model sees them at inference and processed with --parse-special, so chat-format special tokens contribute to the importance matrix. The corpus rendered for this model is included in this repo: granite-4.2-30b-calibration-v6.txt. The imatrix is available here: granite-4.2-30b-imatrix.gguf.

<details>

<summary>Calibration render details</summary>

{
  "generator": "auto_quant_v2 calibration renderer",
  "recipe": "calibration-v6",
  "model": "granite-4.2-30b",
  "encoder": "chat_template",
  "chunk_size": 512,
  "prose_chunks": 238,
  "tool_chunks": 335,
  "total_chunks": 573,
  "tool_chunk_fraction": 0.585,
  "n_conversations": 137,
  "extension_convs_used": 0,
  "conversation_token_lengths": [
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  ],
  "warnings": []
}

</details>

Embed/output weights

Some of these quants (Q3_K_XL, Q4_K_L etc) are the standard quantization method with the embeddings and output weights quantized to Q8_0 instead of what they would normally default to.

ARM/AVX information

llama.cpp automatically "repacks" weights into an interleaved layout at load time for faster inference on ARM and AVX machines - details in this PR. This once required downloading special Q4_0_4_4/4_8/8_8 files; those are long gone. Online repacking now covers Q4_0, IQ4_NL, and most K-quants, so no special quant choice is needed for CPU inference.

Which file should I choose?

<details>

<summary>Click here for details</summary>

An older (early 2024) but still useful write-up with charts comparing quant performances is provided by Artefact2 here

The first thing to figure out is how big a model you can run. To do this, you'll need to figure out how much RAM and/or VRAM you have.

If you want your model running as FAST as possible, you'll want to fit the whole thing on your GPU's VRAM. Aim for a quant with a file size 1-2GB smaller than your GPU's total VRAM.

If you want the absolute maximum quality, add both your system RAM and your GPU's VRAM together, then similarly grab a quant with a file size 1-2GB Smaller than that total.

Hugging Face can also do this math for you: add your hardware in your Local Apps settings and the model page will show which files fit.

Next, you'll need to decide if you want to use an 'I-quant' or a 'K-quant'.

If you don't want to think too much, grab one of the K-quants. These are in format 'QX_K_X', like Q5_K_M.

If you want to get more into the weeds, you can check out this extremely useful feature chart:

llama.cpp feature matrix

But basically, if you're aiming for below Q4, and you're running cuBLAS (Nvidia) or rocBLAS (AMD), you should look towards the I-quants. These are in format IQX_X, like IQ3_M. These are newer and offer better performance for their size.

These I-quants can also be used on CPU, but will be slower than their K-quant equivalent, so speed vs performance is a tradeoff you'll have to decide.

</details>

Credits

Thank you kalomaze and Dampf for assistance in creating the imatrix calibration dataset.

Thank you ZeroWw for the inspiration to experiment with embed/output.

Want to support my work? Visit my ko-fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/bartowski