Why LM Studio is slower than llama.cpp: You aren't offloading ALL layers to GPU
Fancy-Snow7 · reddit · 2026-08-20
A user explains that LM Studio's slowness is due to incomplete GPU layer offloading. The max slider value (e.g., 65 for Qwen) only covers reported layers, leaving input/output layers on CPU. Manually setting layers to 66 or using --gpu-layers all drops CPU usage from 40% to 5%, hits 100% GPU, and boosts speed by 20%. LM Studio restricts entering values higher than the metadata, causing the bottleneck.
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