Pick a GPU, a model and quantization, then drag the context slider. The bar chart shows how your VRAM budget breaks down: model weights, KV cache, and overhead. A green verdict means everything fits on the GPU; yellow means partial CPU offload; red means it won't run at all.

How we calculate this – assumptions & formulas

This is a visual budget planner, not a lab measurement. Real usage varies with tokenizer, model build, CUDA graph, and inference engine.

1. Model weights

weights (GB) = parameters × bytes_per_weight / GiB

Bytes per weight: Q4 ≈ 0.56, Q8 ≈ 1.0625, 3.7 bpw ≈ 0.4625, etc.

2. KV cache

kv_per_token = 2 × layers × kv_heads × head_dim × 2 bytes
kv_cache (GB) = kv_per_token × context / GiB

Assumes FP16 KV cache (2 bytes per value). Architecture estimates vary by model size.

3. Overhead

overhead = (weights + kv_cache) × 0.06

6% covers CUDA context, engine buffers, and small runtime allocations.

4. Verdict

Fits if total ≤ VRAM × 0.95. Partial offload if spill ≤ 16 GB RAM. Otherwise won't fit.

5. Speed estimate

decode (tok/s) = (bandwidth × 0.8) / (weights + kv_per_token / GiB)
prefill (tok/s) = (TFLOPS × 0.55) / (2 × params)

Decode is memory-bandwidth bound; prefill is compute bound.

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