Which needs less VRAM, Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B or Llama 3.1 405B?

At BF16, Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B needs 16.6 GB and Llama 3.1 405B needs 891.0 GB, so Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B is the lighter option to run locally.

What is the difference between Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B and Llama 3.1 405B?

Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B is a 8B model from dphn (Llama 3 family), while Llama 3.1 405B is a 405B model from Meta (Llama 3 family). Compare their VRAM requirements above to see which fits your GPU or Mac.

Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B vs Llama 3.1 405B

Side-by-side comparison of VRAM requirements, quantization, context length, and hardware compatibility.

Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B

dphn · 8B

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Llama 3.1 405B

Meta · 405B

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Specifications

	Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B	Llama 3.1 405B
Parameters	8B	405B
Context	8K	—
Architecture	LlamaForCausalLM	—
License	Other	Llama 3.1 Community
Downloads	13.1K	514.6K
Released	Jan 2026	Sep 2024

VRAM by Quantization: Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B vs Llama 3.1 405B

Quantization	Bits	Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B VRAM	Llama 3.1 405B VRAM
BF16	16.00	16.6 GB	891 GB

Verdict

Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B needs less VRAM at BF16 (16.6 GB vs 891.0 GB), so it fits on smaller GPUs. Llama 3.1 405B is the more widely downloaded of the two.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which needs less VRAM, Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B or Llama 3.1 405B?: At BF16, Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B needs 16.6 GB and Llama 3.1 405B needs 891.0 GB, so Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B is the lighter option to run locally.
What is the difference between Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B and Llama 3.1 405B?: Dolphin 2.9 Llama3 8B is a 8B model from dphn (Llama 3 family), while Llama 3.1 405B is a 405B model from Meta (Llama 3 family). Compare their VRAM requirements above to see which fits your GPU or Mac.