Can Qwen 2.5 3B run on NVIDIA L40 48GB?

YES — Runs Great

B63Good

○Estimated from fit model

Qwen 2.5 3B needs ~9.7 GB VRAM. NVIDIA L40 48GB has 48.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~48 tok/s.

Runtime: llama.cppCapacity: RoomyBandwidth: HighStack: StandardBottleneck: 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) — 9.7 GB, 48.0 tok/s, Runs well

9.7 GB required48.0 GB available

20% VRAM used

Fit status

Runs well

Decode

48.0 tok/s

TTFT

4033 ms

Safe context

131K

Memory

9.7 GB / 48.0 GB

Memory breakdown

Weights1.8 GB

KV Cache2.2 GB

Runtime0.9 GB

Headroom4.8 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsQwen 2.5 3B on NVIDIA L40 48GB
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: 48.0 tok/s decode · 4.0s TTFT (warm) · 120 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.

No major red flags

This recommendation has enough memory headroom and acceptable estimated speed for the selected workload.

Best improvement path

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	B	Runs well	48.0 tok/s	2200 ms	131K
Coding	B	Runs well	48.0 tok/s	4033 ms	131K
Agentic Coding	B	Runs well	48.0 tok/s	5867 ms	131K
Reasoning	B	Runs well	48.0 tok/s	4767 ms	131K
RAG	B	Runs well	42.0 tok/s	8381 ms	131K

Quantization options

How Qwen 2.5 3B (3B params) fits at each quantization level on NVIDIA L40 48GB (48.0 GB usable).

Quant	Bits	VRAM	Quality	Fit
Q2_K	2	1.2 GB	Low	B60
Q3_K_S	3	1.5 GB	Low	B60
NVFP4	4

Get started

Copy-paste commands to run Qwen 2.5 3B on your machine.

Run

ollama run qwen2.5:3b

Frequently asked questions

See all results for NVIDIA L40 48GB See all hardware for Qwen 2.5 3B

URL: https://willitrunai.com/can-run/qwen-2.5-3b-on-l40-48gb

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