Performance
Leverage your GPU for faster speech recognition. Vocalinux supports AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs via Vulkan—with automatic fallback to CPU when needed.
Run this command to check if your system supports Vulkan GPU acceleration:
vulkaninfo --summary | grep deviceNameIf you see your GPU name, you're ready for accelerated dictation!
AMD, Intel, NVIDIA
Cross-platform GPU API supported by all major GPU vendors. The default and most compatible backend for whisper.cpp.
NVIDIA only
NVIDIA's proprietary GPU compute platform. High performance but requires NVIDIA GPU and CUDA toolkit.
All systems
Pure CPU processing. Slower but works on any system. Automatic fallback when GPU is unavailable.
Approximate transcription times for 5 seconds of audio. GPU times assume a mid-range Vulkan-compatible GPU.
| Model | Size | CPU Time | GPU Time | Accuracy | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tiny | ~39MB | ~0.5s | ~0.2s | Good for real-time | Real-time dictation, older hardware |
| base | ~74MB | ~0.8s | ~0.3s | Better accuracy | Balanced speed/accuracy |
| small | ~244MB | ~1.5s | ~0.5s | High accuracy | Most users, good balance |
| medium | ~769MB | ~4s | ~1.2s | Very high accuracy | Accuracy-focused use, with GPU |
| large | ~1.5GB | ~8s | ~2.5s | Best accuracy | Maximum accuracy, requires GPU |
Functional but slower processing
Real-time dictation with small/base models
Real-time with any model including large
Some Intel integrated GPUs don't fully support the compute features needed for whisper.cpp GPU acceleration. Vocalinux v0.7.0+ automatically detects incompatible Intel GPUs and falls back to CPU processing for reliability.
The installer automatically detects your GPU and configures the best backend. Just run and go.