Can Phi 3 Mini 3.8B run on Tesla P40 24GB?

YES — Runs Great

B68Good

○Estimated from fit model

Phi 3 Mini 3.8B needs ~11.8 GB VRAM. Tesla P40 24GB has 24.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~53 tok/s.

Runtime: OllamaCapacity: RoomyBandwidth: LowStack: BasicBottleneck: Balanced

Operating mode

Choose the run profile you care about

Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.

Current mode

Balanced

Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.

Capabilities:

Select quantization to explore

Q4_K_M (Medium quality) — 11.8 GB, 53.2 tok/s, Runs well

11.8 GB required24.0 GB available

49% VRAM used

Fit status

Runs well

Decode

53.2 tok/s

TTFT

3639 ms

Safe context

49K

Memory

11.8 GB / 24.0 GB

Memory breakdown

Weights2.3 GB

KV Cache5.9 GB

Runtime1.2 GB

Headroom2.4 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsPhi 3 Mini 3.8B on Tesla P40 24GB
1st promptCold start — includes initialization
>What is local AI inference?
Local AI inference means running an AI language model directly on your own hardware — your laptop, desktop, or server — instead of sending requests to a remote cloud API.

When you run inference locally the model weights are loaded into your GPU or unified memory. Each token you generate requires reading those weights from memory, so memory bandwidth is the main bottleneck for decode speed.

Key benefits of running locally:
 - Full privacy: your prompts never leave your machine
 - No per-token cost or rate limits
 - Works offline once the model is downloaded
 - Latency depends only on your hardware
2nd promptWarm — model ready, no init overhead
>How much VRAM do I need?
It depends on the model size and quantization level. A rough rule of thumb:

 Model size Q4 (4-bit) Q8 (8-bit) FP16
 7B params ~4.3 GB ~7.5 GB ~14 GB
 13B params ~7.9 GB ~13.9 GB ~26 GB
 70B params ~42.7 GB ~74.9 GB ~140 GB

Most people use 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M) which gives 90-95% of full quality at a fraction of the memory. A 24 GB GPU can comfortably run most 7B-13B models.
Estimated: 53.2 tok/s decode · 3.6s TTFT (warm) · 133 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.

Older PCIe generation

PCIe 3.0 is workable, but it compounds the penalty when you offload heavily or try to scale across multiple cards.

Best improvement path

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	B	Runs well	53.2 tok/s	1985 ms	49K
Coding	B	Runs well	53.2 tok/s	3639 ms	49K
Agentic Coding	A	Runs well	53.2 tok/s	5293 ms	49K
Reasoning	B	Runs well	53.2 tok/s	4301 ms	49K
RAG	A	Runs well	53.2 tok/s	6617 ms	49K