LLM Roofline
Qwen2.5 · Apache-2.0 · HF: Qwen/Qwen2.5-14B-Instruct

Qwen2.5 14B Instruct — VRAM, KV Cache & Hardware Matrix

Serverless API Rate
$0.06 in / $0.20 out per 1M
Parameters
14.8B Dense
Attention
GQA (8 KV / 40 Q)
Layers × Hidden
48 × 5120
Max Native Context
32k tokens
MoE Experts
N/A (Dense)

Quantization Memory Footprint

Quantization BPW Weights Only Total @ 8k Ctx Total @ 32k Ctx Quality
FP16 16.00 28.12 GiB 31.07 GiB 35.57 GiB Lossless Reference
Q8_0 8.50 14.94 GiB 17.89 GiB 22.39 GiB Near-Lossless
Q6_K 6.57 11.55 GiB 14.50 GiB 19.00 GiB High Precision
Q5_K_M 5.69 10.00 GiB 12.95 GiB 17.45 GiB Balanced High
Q4_K_M 4.85 8.52 GiB 11.48 GiB 15.98 GiB Recommended 4-bit
MLX_4BIT 4.50 7.91 GiB 10.86 GiB 15.36 GiB Apple Silicon Optimized
IQ4_XS 4.25 7.47 GiB 10.42 GiB 14.92 GiB Compact 4-bit
Q3_K_M 3.91 6.87 GiB 9.82 GiB 14.32 GiB Aggressive Compression

Hardware Compatibility & Speed Leaderboard (Q4_K_M @ 32k Context)

Hardware Status Total / Limit Decode TTFT (4k) Max Safe Ctx Inspect
Cloud NVIDIA H200 SXM (141 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 140.4 GiB 258.6 tok/s 0.22s 32k Simulate →
Cloud NVIDIA H100 SXM (80 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 79.4 GiB 180.4 tok/s 0.22s 32k Simulate →
Cloud NVIDIA A100 SXM (80 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 79.4 GiB 107.2 tok/s 0.65s 32k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 95.0 GiB 96.5 tok/s 0.80s 32k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX 5090 (32 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 31.0 GiB 94.2 tok/s 0.99s 32k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 23.0 GiB 53.0 tok/s 1.24s 32k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX 3090 (24 GB Used) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 23.0 GiB 48.0 tok/s 2.98s 32k Simulate →
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (24 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 23.0 GiB 46.8 tok/s 2.06s 32k Simulate →
Cloud NVIDIA L40S (48 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 47.4 GiB 45.4 tok/s 0.58s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra (256 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 199.7 GiB 41.0 tok/s 3.88s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra (512 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 399.4 GiB 41.0 tok/s 3.88s 32k Simulate →
2x NVIDIA RTX 3090 Rig (48 GB) COMFORTABLE 16.0 / 46.6 GiB 40.3 tok/s 3.65s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Studio M2 Ultra (192 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 149.8 GiB 40.0 tok/s 4.29s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Studio M4 Max (64 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 49.9 GiB 27.0 tok/s 5.90s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Studio M4 Max (128 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 99.8 GiB 27.0 tok/s 5.90s 32k Simulate →
Apple MacBook Pro M3 Max (64 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 49.9 GiB 19.5 tok/s 7.90s 32k Simulate →
Apple MacBook Pro M3 Max (128 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 99.8 GiB 19.5 tok/s 7.90s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Mini M4 Pro (48 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 37.4 GiB 12.9 tok/s 12.17s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Mini M4 Pro (64 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 49.9 GiB 12.9 tok/s 12.17s 32k Simulate →
Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Strix Halo (128 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 96.0 GiB 12.2 tok/s 4.39s 32k Simulate →
Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Strix Halo (64 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 48.0 GiB 12.2 tok/s 4.39s 32k Simulate →
Apple Mac Mini M4 (24 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 18.0 GiB 5.5 tok/s 26.92s 32k Simulate →
Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Mini-PC (64 GB) COMFORTABLE 15.8 / 48.0 GiB 5.4 tok/s 12.55s 32k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX 5080 (16 GB) OOM 16.0 / 15.0 GiB OOM — 27k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti (16 GB) OOM 16.0 / 15.0 GiB OOM — 27k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti (16 GB) OOM 16.0 / 15.0 GiB OOM — 27k Simulate →
NVIDIA RTX 3060 (12 GB) OOM 16.0 / 11.0 GiB OOM — 6k Simulate →
Apple Mac Mini M4 (16 GB) OOM 15.8 / 10.0 GiB OOM — 9k Simulate →

Interactive Qwen2.5 14B Instruct Simulator

14.8B Dense · GQA
1792 GB/s · 250 TFLOPS
3. Weight Quantization 4.85 bpw
4. KV Cache
32,768 tok
Compute Roofline
COMFORTABLE FIT Memory-Bandwidth Bound
Max Safe Ctx: 32k
Memory Allocation Footprint 15.98 / 95.00 GiB usable
Weights: 8.52 GiB KV Cache: 6.00 GiB Overhead: 1.45 GiB Headroom: 79.02 GiB
Decode Speed
96.5
tok/s (batch=1)
Prefill Speed
5377
prompt tok/s
TTFT Latency
0.80s
for 4,096 tok
Active Params
14.8B
of 14.8B total
llama.cpp Server Command
llama-server -hf Qwen/Qwen2.5-14B-Instruct:Q4_K_M -ngl 99 -fa on -c 32768 --port 8080
Context KV Cache Total VRAM Decode Status
4k 0.75 GiB 10.37 GiB 151.2 tok/s COMFORTABLE
8k 1.50 GiB 11.48 GiB 139.9 tok/s COMFORTABLE
16k 3.00 GiB 12.98 GiB 121.7 tok/s COMFORTABLE
32k 6.00 GiB 15.98 GiB 96.5 tok/s COMFORTABLE

Buy-vs-Cloud-vs-API Monthly TCO Break-Even

USE SERVERLESS API
Own Hardware/mo
$163.94
45.7h active + power
Cloud GPU/mo
$97.33
@$1.85/hr spot/pod
Serverless API/mo
$6.00
API cheaper

Engineering FAQ — Qwen2.5 14B Instruct

How much VRAM does Qwen2.5 14B Instruct require in Q4_K_M?

Qwen2.5 14B Instruct weights occupy 8.52 GiB in Q4_K_M. Including 32k FP16 KV cache and runtime buffers, total memory is 15.98 GiB.

What is the cheapest local hardware that runs Qwen2.5 14B Instruct?

NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96 GB) (96 GB) runs Qwen2.5 14B Instruct Q4_K_M at ~96.5 tok/s decode and 0.80s TTFT.

How does Qwen2.5 14B Instruct scale KV cache at long context?

Qwen2.5 14B Instruct uses GQA with 8 KV heads across 48 layers (128 head_dim).