Qwen3 30B-A3B VRAM requirements

Qwen3 30B-A3B has 30.5B parameters, of which about 3.3B are used per token; all 128 experts still have to be in memory. With an 8K-token context and one request it needs about 20.2 GB of GPU memory at Q4_K_M, 32.6 GB at FP8 and 63.9 GB at FP16/BF16. The published weights take 56.9 GB (BF16). On one 24 GB RTX 3090 / 4090 it runs at Q4_K_M with its full 40K-token context.

Open Qwen3 30B-A3B in the calculator

VRAM by quantization

Weights plus the KV cache for 8,192 tokens in FP16 and the runtime overhead (0.5 GB plus 10%). Each row opens the calculator with that setting. What the GGUF names mean.

PrecisionWeightsTotalSmallest setup
As published (BF16) 56.9 GB 63.9 GB A100 / H100 80GB
FP16 / BF16 56.9 GB 63.9 GB A100 / H100 80GB
FP8 / INT8 28.4 GB 32.6 GB A100 40GB
INT4 (AWQ / GPTQ) 15.1 GB 17.9 GB RTX 3090 / 4090
GGUF Q8_0 30.2 GB 34.6 GB A100 40GB
GGUF Q6_K 23.3 GB 27.0 GB RTX 5090
GGUF Q5_K_M 20.2 GB 23.5 GB RTX 3090 / 4090
GGUF Q4_K_M 17.2 GB 20.2 GB RTX 3090 / 4090
GGUF Q3_K_M 13.9 GB 16.6 GB RTX 3090 / 4090
GGUF Q2_K 11.9 GB 14.4 GB RTX 4060 Ti 16GB

KV cache at long context

All 48 layers use full attention. Each extra token of context adds 96 KB of FP16 cache per request. How the KV cache works.

ContextKV cache, FP16KV cache, FP8Total at Q4_K_M
4K tokens 384 MB 192 MB 19.8 GB
32K tokens 3.00 GB 1.50 GB 22.7 GB
40K tokens 3.75 GB 1.88 GB 23.5 GB

Which GPUs can run Qwen3 30B-A3B

With 8,192 tokens of context. Several GPUs means one tensor-parallel group of 2, 4 or 8 cards.

GPUMemoryQ4_K_MFP8
RTX 3060 12 GB Needs 2 Needs 4
RTX 4060 Ti 16GB 16 GB Needs 2 Needs 4
RTX 3090 / 4090 24 GB Fits on one Needs 2
RTX 5090 32 GB Fits on one Needs 2
A100 40GB 40 GB Fits on one Fits on one
Mac, 64 GB unified memory about 75% of it is usable by the GPU by default 48 GB Fits on one Fits on one
L40S / RTX 6000 Ada 48 GB Fits on one Fits on one
A100 / H100 80GB 80 GB Fits on one Fits on one
Mac, 128 GB unified memory about 75% of it is usable by the GPU by default 96 GB Fits on one Fits on one
H200 141 GB Fits on one Fits on one
B200 180 GB Fits on one Fits on one

How fast Qwen3 30B-A3B writes

Tokens per second for one request with 8,192 tokens of context, estimated from memory bandwidth and the parameters read per token. A dash means it does not fit on one card. Try other settings in the speed calculator.

HardwareBandwidthQ4_K_MFP8
RTX 3060 12GB 360 GB/s — —
RTX 4090 1,008 GB/s 93–165 —
RTX 5090 1,792 GB/s 149–276 —
M4 Max Mac (128 GB) 546 GB/s 54–93 38–64
M3 Ultra Mac Studio (512 GB) 819 GB/s 77–136 55–95
H100 SXM 3,350 GB/s 233–460 179–339
H200 4,800 GB/s 290–600 230–452

Longest context on one GPU

How many tokens of context fit on a single card with one request and an FP16 KV cache. "Full" means the model's whole context window fits.

GPUMemoryQ4_K_MQ8_0FP8
RTX 3060 12 GB No No No
RTX 4060 Ti 16GB 16 GB No No No
RTX 3090 / 4090 24 GB 40K (full) No No
RTX 5090 32 GB 40K (full) No 2K
A100 40GB 40 GB 40K (full) 40K (full) 40K (full)
Mac, 64 GB unified memory 48 GB 40K (full) 40K (full) 40K (full)
L40S / RTX 6000 Ada 48 GB 40K (full) 40K (full) 40K (full)
A100 / H100 80GB 80 GB 40K (full) 40K (full) 40K (full)
Mac, 128 GB unified memory 96 GB 40K (full) 40K (full) 40K (full)
H200 141 GB 40K (full) 40K (full) 40K (full)
B200 180 GB 40K (full) 40K (full) 40K (full)

Model details

Parameters
30.5B (30,532,122,624)
Experts
128 routed experts, all loaded
Active per token
3.3B
Layers
All 48 layers use full attention
Attention cache
4 KV heads × 128
Context length
40,960 tokens
Published weights
56.9 GB (BF16)
On Hugging Face
Qwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B

Other models

Numbers read from the model files on Hugging Face on .