DeepSeek R1-0528 671B on A800 80GB SXM (80GB) — VRAM, KV Cache & Throughput
DeepSeek R1-0528 671B (671B total, 37B active, Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) MoE) uses 377 GiB of 4-bit weights (Q4_K_M), requiring 378.11 GiB total at 8K context and 379.71 GiB at 32K on A800 80GB SXM (~3 tok/s decode).
Recommended Hardware for Current Configuration
Production Launch Commands
llama-server -hf unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-0528-GGUF:Q4_K_M \ --ctx-size 8192 -ngl 999 --flash-attn
vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-0528 \ --max-model-len 8192 --gpu-memory-utilization 0.92
Cloud GPU Comparison & Rent-vs-Buy TCO
Verified public rates across RunPod, Vast.ai, Vultr, and DigitalOcean.
| Provider | Recommended Instance | Total VRAM | Hourly Rate | Monthly at Selected Hours | Billing Mode | Deploy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RunPod | 2x B300 288GB Blackwell Ultra (Community Cloud) | 576 GB | $13.88 / hr | $1687.81 / mo | Per-second | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| Vast.ai | 8x A100 80GB SXM (Verified Host · SXM4) | 640 GB | $3.54 / hr | $429.98 / mo | Spot / On-demand | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| Vultr ($300 Free Credit*) | 8x A100 80GB SXM (Dedicated Instance · $300 Credit*) | 640 GB | $19.18 / hr | $2331.80 / mo | Hourly | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| Vultr Cloud GPU | 8x A100 80GB SXM (Dedicated Instance) | 640 GB | $19.18 / hr | $2331.80 / mo | Hourly | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| DigitalOcean | 8x Instinct MI300X 192GB (Dedicated Instance) | 1536 GB | $20.72 / hr | $2519.55 / mo | Per-second | Deploy GPU ↗ |
Rates reflect public listings on the verification date and fluctuate with regional inventory.
Fine-Tuning VRAM Requirements (QLoRA / LoRA / Full) — DeepSeek R1-0528 671B
Engineering Sizing Notes & Optimization Playbook
Quick Hardware Verdict
A single A800 80GB SXM (80GB) cannot hold 4-bit DeepSeek R1-0528 671B (378.11 GiB at 8K) entirely in VRAM. Use multi-GPU tensor parallelism, offload layers to system RAM, or deploy on a larger cloud GPU.
KV Cache & Runtime Tuning
DeepSeek R1-0528 671B uses Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) MoE (671B total, 37B active per token). Moving from 8K to 32K context expands FP16 KV cache from 0.54 GiB to 2.14 GiB; enabling 8-bit KV cache (llama.cpp -ctk q8_0 -ctv q8_0 or vLLM --kv-cache-dtype fp8) saves 1.07 GiB at 32K (reducing total VRAM to 378.64 GiB).
VRAM Scaling Across Context Windows (4K to 128K, 4-bit Weights)
Quantization Precision & Memory Matrix — DeepSeek R1-0528 671B @ 8K
| Quantization Format | Weights (GiB) | KV Cache | Total VRAM (GiB) | Decode Speed | Compatibility (A800 80GB SXM) | Recommended GPU | Data Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native Weights (BF16 / FP8 / MXFP4 — Lossless) (FP8) | 1250 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 1251.11 GiB (1343.37 GB) | ~0.8 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Official checkpoint size |
| FP8 / GGUF Q8_0 (8-bit — Near-Lossless) (Q8_0) | 664 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 665.11 GiB (714.16 GB) | ~1.6 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF Q6_K (6-bit — High Precision) (Q6_K) | 513 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 514.11 GiB (552.02 GB) | ~2.1 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF Q5_K_M (5-bit — Balanced) (Q5_K_M) | 443 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 444.11 GiB (476.86 GB) | ~2.5 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Measured GGUF shard size |
| Q4_K_M / UD-Q4_K_XL / AWQ (4-bit — Recommended) (Q4_K_M) | 377 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 378.11 GiB (405.99 GB) | ~3 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF IQ4_XS (4.25-bit — Compact) (IQ4_XS) | 333.5 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 334.61 GiB (359.28 GB) | ~3.5 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF Q3_K_M (3-bit — Low VRAM) (Q3_K_M) | 298 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 299.11 GiB (321.17 GB) | ~4 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF UD-Q2_K_XL (2-bit — Extreme MoE) (UD-Q2_K_XL) | 229.5 GiB | 0.54 GiB | 230.61 GiB (247.62 GB) | ~5.7 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Instinct MI325X 256GB (256GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
Technical Specifications & FAQ
Does DeepSeek R1-0528 671B fit on A800 80GB SXM (80GB)?
In 4-bit (Q4_K_M) at 8,192 context, DeepSeek R1-0528 671B requires 378.11 GiB total GPU memory (377 GiB weights + 0.54 GiB KV cache + 0.57 GiB runtime buffers) against 76 GiB usable on A800 80GB SXM, delivering ~3 tok/s decode.
How much VRAM does DeepSeek R1-0528 671B need at 32K context?
At 32,768 context tokens, DeepSeek R1-0528 671B (Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) MoE) allocates 2.14 GiB for KV cache and state, bringing total 4-bit VRAM to 379.71 GiB (407.71 GB decimal).