Llama 3.3 70B Instruct on RTX 5070 Ti (16GB) — VRAM, KV Cache & Throughput
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct (70.55B total, 70.55B active, Dense GQA) uses 39.6 GiB of 4-bit weights (Q4_K_M), requiring 42.67 GiB total at 8K context and 50.17 GiB at 32K on RTX 5070 Ti (~1.9 tok/s decode).
Recommended Hardware for Current Configuration
Production Launch Commands
llama-server -hf unsloth/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-GGUF:Q4_K_M \ --ctx-size 8192 -ngl 999 --flash-attn
vllm serve meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct \ --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 | 1x RTX A6000 (Community Cloud) | 48 GB | $0.33 / hr | $40.13 / mo | Per-second | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| Vast.ai | 1x A100 80GB SXM (Verified Host · SXM4) | 80 GB | $0.44 / hr | $53.75 / mo | Spot / On-demand | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| Vultr ($300 Free Credit*) | 1x L40S 48GB (Dedicated Instance · $300 Credit*) | 48 GB | $1.67 / hr | $203.19 / mo | Hourly | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| Vultr Cloud GPU | 1x L40S 48GB (Dedicated Instance) | 48 GB | $1.67 / hr | $203.19 / mo | Hourly | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| DigitalOcean | 1x RTX 6000 Ada (Dedicated Instance) | 48 GB | $1.57 / hr | $190.91 / 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) — Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Engineering Sizing Notes & Optimization Playbook
Quick Hardware Verdict
A single RTX 5070 Ti (16GB) cannot hold 4-bit Llama 3.3 70B Instruct (42.67 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
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct uses Dense GQA (70.55B total, 70.55B active per token). Moving from 8K to 32K context expands FP16 KV cache from 2.5 GiB to 10 GiB; enabling 8-bit KV cache (llama.cpp -ctk q8_0 -ctv q8_0 or vLLM --kv-cache-dtype fp8) saves 5 GiB at 32K (reducing total VRAM to 45.17 GiB).
VRAM Scaling Across Context Windows (4K to 128K, 4-bit Weights)
Quantization Precision & Memory Matrix — Llama 3.3 70B Instruct @ 8K
| Quantization Format | Weights (GiB) | KV Cache | Total VRAM (GiB) | Decode Speed | Compatibility (RTX 5070 Ti) | Recommended GPU | Data Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native Weights (BF16 / FP8 / MXFP4 — Lossless) (BF16) | 131.41 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 134.48 GiB (144.4 GB) | ~0.8 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Instinct MI300X 192GB (192GB) | Official checkpoint size |
| FP8 / GGUF Q8_0 (8-bit — Near-Lossless) (Q8_0) | 69.83 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 72.9 GiB (78.28 GB) | ~0.9 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF Q6_K (6-bit — High Precision) (Q6_K) | 53.91 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 56.98 GiB (61.18 GB) | ~1.3 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF Q5_K_M (5-bit — Balanced) (Q5_K_M) | 46.52 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 49.59 GiB (53.25 GB) | ~1.5 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
| Q4_K_M / UD-Q4_K_XL / AWQ (4-bit — Recommended) (Q4_K_M) | 39.6 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 42.67 GiB (45.82 GB) | ~1.9 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | A40 48GB (48GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF IQ4_XS (4.25-bit — Compact) (IQ4_XS) | 35.33 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 38.4 GiB (41.23 GB) | ~2.3 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | A40 48GB (48GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF Q3_K_M (3-bit — Low VRAM) (Q3_K_M) | 31.91 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 34.98 GiB (37.56 GB) | ~2.7 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | A40 48GB (48GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
| GGUF UD-Q2_K_XL (2-bit — Extreme MoE) (UD-Q2_K_XL) | 25.11 GiB | 2.5 GiB | 28.18 GiB (30.26 GB) | ~4.1 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Radeon AI PRO R9700 32GB (32GB) | Measured GGUF shard size |
Technical Specifications & FAQ
Does Llama 3.3 70B Instruct fit on RTX 5070 Ti (16GB)?
In 4-bit (Q4_K_M) at 8,192 context, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct requires 42.67 GiB total GPU memory (39.6 GiB weights + 2.5 GiB KV cache + 0.57 GiB runtime buffers) against 15.2 GiB usable on RTX 5070 Ti, delivering ~1.9 tok/s decode.
How much VRAM does Llama 3.3 70B Instruct need at 32K context?
At 32,768 context tokens, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct (Dense GQA) allocates 10 GiB for KV cache and state, bringing total 4-bit VRAM to 50.17 GiB (53.87 GB decimal).