Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B on RTX 5090 D (32GB) — VRAM, KV Cache & Throughput
Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B (480B total, 35B active, Sparse MoE + GQA) uses 271.39 GiB of 4-bit weights (Q4_K_M), requiring 273.9 GiB total at 8K context and 279.71 GiB at 32K on RTX 5090 D (~2.8 tok/s decode).
Recommended Hardware for Current Configuration
Production Launch Commands
llama-server -hf unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct-GGUF:Q4_K_M \ --ctx-size 8192 -ngl 999 --flash-attn
vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-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 | 2x B200 180GB (Community Cloud) | 360 GB | $11.96 / hr | $1454.34 / mo | Per-second | Deploy GPU ↗ |
| Vast.ai | 2x B200 180GB (Verified Host) | 360 GB | $15.00 / hr | $1824.49 / 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) — Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B
Engineering Sizing Notes & Optimization Playbook
Quick Hardware Verdict
A single RTX 5090 D (32GB) cannot hold 4-bit Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B (273.9 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
Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B uses Sparse MoE + GQA (480B total, 35B active per token). Moving from 8K to 32K context expands FP16 KV cache from 1.94 GiB to 7.75 GiB; enabling 8-bit KV cache (llama.cpp -ctk q8_0 -ctv q8_0 or vLLM --kv-cache-dtype fp8) saves 3.87 GiB at 32K (reducing total VRAM to 275.84 GiB).
VRAM Scaling Across Context Windows (4K to 128K, 4-bit Weights)
Quantization Precision & Memory Matrix — Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B @ 8K
| Quantization Format | Weights (GiB) | KV Cache | Total VRAM (GiB) | Decode Speed | Compatibility (RTX 5090 D) | Recommended GPU | Data Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Native Weights (BF16 / FP8 / MXFP4 — Lossless) (BF16) | 894.07 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 896.58 GiB (962.7 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) | 474.97 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 477.48 GiB (512.69 GB) | ~1.5 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Config-derived formula |
| GGUF Q6_K (6-bit — High Precision) (Q6_K) | 366.57 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 369.08 GiB (396.3 GB) | ~2 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Config-derived formula |
| GGUF Q5_K_M (5-bit — Balanced) (Q5_K_M) | 318.14 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 320.65 GiB (344.3 GB) | ~2.3 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Config-derived formula |
| Q4_K_M / UD-Q4_K_XL / AWQ (4-bit — Recommended) (Q4_K_M) | 271.39 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 273.9 GiB (294.1 GB) | ~2.8 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Multi-GPU Required | Config-derived formula |
| GGUF IQ4_XS (4.25-bit — Compact) (IQ4_XS) | 237.76 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 240.27 GiB (257.99 GB) | ~3.2 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Instinct MI355X 288GB (288GB) | Config-derived formula |
| GGUF Q3_K_M (3-bit — Low VRAM) (Q3_K_M) | 218.73 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 221.24 GiB (237.55 GB) | ~3.5 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Instinct MI325X 256GB (256GB) | Config-derived formula |
| GGUF UD-Q2_K_XL (2-bit — Extreme MoE) (UD-Q2_K_XL) | 154.05 GiB | 1.94 GiB | 156.56 GiB (168.11 GB) | ~5.2 tok/s | Exceeds Available GPU Memory | Instinct MI300X 192GB (192GB) | Config-derived formula |
Technical Specifications & FAQ
Does Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B fit on RTX 5090 D (32GB)?
In 4-bit (Q4_K_M) at 8,192 context, Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B requires 273.9 GiB total GPU memory (271.39 GiB weights + 1.94 GiB KV cache + 0.57 GiB runtime buffers) against 30.4 GiB usable on RTX 5090 D, delivering ~2.8 tok/s decode.
How much VRAM does Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B need at 32K context?
At 32,768 context tokens, Qwen3 Coder 480B-A35B (Sparse MoE + GQA) allocates 7.75 GiB for KV cache and state, bringing total 4-bit VRAM to 279.71 GiB (300.34 GB decimal).