Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct — Hardware Requirements & GPU Compatibility
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Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct is a 70.6-billion parameter instruction-tuned model from Meta's Llama 3 release. It is fine-tuned for dialogue, coding assistance, and complex reasoning tasks using supervised fine-tuning and RLHF. At the time of release, it was among the most capable openly available models. The model supports an 8K token context window and requires substantial VRAM for local inference, typically needing multi-GPU setups or high-VRAM professional GPUs. It has been widely adopted for local deployment in quantized formats. Released under the Meta Llama 3 Community License.
83.9K downloads
1.5K likesSpecifications
- Publisher
- Meta
- Family
- Llama 3
- Parameters
- 70.6B
- Release Date
- 2025-06-18
- License
- Llama 3 Community
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HuggingFace
How Much VRAM Does Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct Need?
Select a quantization to see compatible GPUs below.
| Quantization | Bits | VRAM | + Context | File Size | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BF16 | 16.00 | 155.2 GB | — | 141.11 GB | Brain floating point 16 — preferred for training |
Which GPUs Can Run Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct?
BF16 · 155.2 GBMeta Llama 3 70B Instruct (BF16) requires 155.2 GB of VRAM to load the model weights. For comfortable inference with headroom for KV cache and system overhead, 202+ GB is recommended. No single GPU has enough memory — multi-GPU or cluster setups are needed.
Which Devices Can Run Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct?
BF16 · 155.2 GB4 devices with unified memory can run Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct, including NVIDIA DGX H100, NVIDIA DGX A100 640GB, Mac Pro M2 Ultra (192 GB).
Runs great
— Plenty of headroom
Decent
— Enough memory, may be tightRelated Models
Derivatives (1)
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much VRAM does Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct need?
Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct requires 155.2 GB of VRAM at BF16.
VRAM = Weights + KV Cache + Overhead
Weights = 70.6B × 16 bits ÷ 8 = 141.1 GB
KV Cache + Overhead ≈ 14.1 GB (at 2K context + ~0.3 GB framework)
VRAM usage by quantization
BF16155.2 GB- Can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 run Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct?
No — Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct requires at least 155.2 GB at BF16, which exceeds the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090's 32 GB of VRAM.
- Can I run Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct on a Mac?
Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct requires at least 155.2 GB at BF16, which exceeds the unified memory of most consumer Macs. You would need a Mac Studio or Mac Pro with a high-memory configuration.
- Can I run Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct locally?
Yes — Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct can run locally on consumer hardware. At BF16 quantization it needs 155.2 GB of VRAM. Popular tools include Ollama, LM Studio, and llama.cpp.
- How fast is Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct?
At BF16, Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct can reach ~19 tok/s on AMD Instinct MI300X. Speed depends mainly on GPU memory bandwidth. Real-world results typically within ±20%.
tok/s = (bandwidth GB/s ÷ model GB) × efficiency
Example: AMD Instinct MI300X → 5300 ÷ 155.2 × 0.55 = ~19 tok/s
Estimated speed at BF16 (155.2 GB)
AMD Instinct MI300X~19 tok/sReal-world results typically within ±20%. Speed depends on batch size, quantization kernel, and software stack.
- What's the download size of Meta Llama 3 70B Instruct?
At BF16, the download is about 141.11 GB.