llmrun
Mistral AIMixtralMixtralForCausalLM

Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 — Hardware Requirements & GPU Compatibility

Chat

Mixtral-8x22B-v0.1 is Mistral AI's large sparse mixture-of-experts base model, a pretrained checkpoint with no instruction tuning and no built-in moderation, intended as the foundation for fine-tuned or instruct derivatives rather than direct chat use. It routes each token through 2 of 8 experts, giving roughly 39 billion active parameters out of about 141 billion total, so its per-token compute is far lighter than its total size at the cost of having to hold every expert in memory. Its pretraining data covers English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Because all experts must be resident even though only a fraction activate per token, it still needs a multi-GPU workstation even when quantized. Context length is 65,536 tokens. It is released under the Apache 2.0 license, permitting unrestricted commercial and research use, and was published in April 2024, ahead of an instruction-tuned Mixtral-8x22B-Instruct release.

140.6B params · MoE39B active66K contextApache 2.012.0K downloads250 likes401 quant downloads

Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 runs on a 96 GB+ Mac or a workstation GPU

Best local pick → Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 96GB) · Q4_K_M · 88.4 GB · ~19 tok/s

Macs from48 GB IQ2_XXS · ~27 tok/s

Apache 2.0

Not set up for it?

Reference GPU · RTX 4090 24 GB

Estimates, ±20% · how we estimate

Run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1

One recommended way. Every other method, OS and quant is in the step-by-step guide.Each way opens a step-by-step guide for your OS and quant.

Recommended

Ollama
one command · needs Ollama installed
$ollama run hf.co/mradermacher/Mixtral-8x22B-v0.1-i1-GGUF

Q4_K_M · needs ~88.4 GB · 16K context

Download: Mixtral-8x22B-v0.1-i1-Q4_K_M.gguf84.37 GBmradermacher

install, OS, other quants

Ways to runOther ways

each opens step-by-step

Run in cloud

Runs on H200 (141 GB) (52 GB headroom) · Q4_K_M

Generation speed
~94 tok/s
generation speed
Cost per 1M output tokens
$10.64
per 1M output tokens

How Much VRAM Does Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 Need?

Select a quantization level; the listed hardware adheres to it.

QuantizationVRAM+32KOn RTX 4090 (reference)
39.4 GB46.5 GB2-bit · i-quant extreme compression — Importance-weighted 2-bit, extreme compression — significant quality lossDoes not fit: needs 42.7 GB
43.0 GB50 GB2-bit · i-quant extra small — Importance-weighted 2-bit, extra smallDoes not fit: needs 46.3 GB
60.5 GB67.6 GB2-bit · K-quant — 2-bit quantization with K-quant improvementsDoes not fit: needs 63.8 GB
69.3 GB76.4 GB3-bit medium — 3-bit medium quantizationDoes not fit: needs 72.6 GB
85.1 GB92.2 GB4-bit medium — 4-bit medium quantization — most popular sweet spotDoes not fit: needs 88.4 GB
101.0 GB108 GB5-bit medium — 5-bit medium quantization — good quality/size tradeoffDoes not fit: needs 104.3 GB
116.8 GB123.8 GB6-bit, very good — 6-bit quantization, very good qualityDoes not fit: needs 120.1 GB
141.4 GB148.4 GB8-bit, near-lossless — 8-bit quantization, near-losslessDoes not fit: needs 144.7 GB
est.calculated, no published file yet

Selected Q4_K_M

4-bit medium quantization

88.4GBat 16K context

Weights
84.4 GB
KV cache
3.8 GB
Overhead
0.3 GB

Doesn't fit RTX 4090 (reference) · needs 64.4 GB more

≥10 tok/s needs ≥374 GB/s · M3 Ultra ~19, M2 Ultra ~19

Or .

Which Hardware Can Run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

Q4_K_M · 85.1 GB

Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 (Q4_K_M) requires 85.1 GB of VRAM to load the model weights. For comfortable inference with headroom for KV cache and system overhead, 111+ GB is recommended. Using the full 66K context window can add up to 14.6 GB, bringing total usage to 99.7 GB. No consumer GPU has enough memory. 30 devices with unified memory can run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1, including Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 256GB), Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 512GB), Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 96GB).

By VRAM tier · typical GPUs and Macs at Q4_K_M
8–16 GB · RTX 4060, RTX 3060 12GB, RTX 5060 Ti 16GBDoesn't fit — smallest quant needs 42.7 GB8 GB tier →12 GB tier →16 GB tier →
24 GB · RTX 4090referenceDoesn't fit — smallest quant needs 42.7 GB24 GB tier →
Mac 32 GB · Mac Mini M4Doesn't fit — smallest quant needs 42.7 GBMacs →
Mac 64 GB · Mac Studio M4 MaxIQ2_M · 51.5 GB · ~22 tok/s · 32KMacs →

How good is Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

llmrun Score blends public benchmark boards into one number; 100 = the average open model.

Not enough data yet for an llmrun Score.

A Score needs results on enough independent boards. How the Composite Score is built

Benchmarks

This is the single board showing results for this model; badges show who ran the test.

  • MMLU

    Epoch AI · Apr 2024Lab-reported

    77.8%

    #17/85 open

    Lab-reported

Alternatives to Mixtral 8x22B v0.1

Mixtral family · 7 models →

Similar models

1
ModelScoreVRAMtok/sWhy it is similar
WizardLM 2 8x22Balpindale—88.4 GB—needs > 24 GBsame size
Fine-tunes & variants(1)

Specifications

Publisher
Mistral AI
Family
Mixtral
Parameters
140.6B
Active parameters
39.2B per token
Architecture
MixtralForCausalLM
Context Length
65,536 tokens
Vocabulary Size
32,000
Release Date
2024-04-16
License
Apache 2.0

Frequently Asked Questions

How much VRAM does Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 need?

Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 requires 85.1 GB of VRAM at Q4_K_M, or 282.0 GB at BF16. Full 66K context adds up to 14.6 GB (99.7 GB total).

VRAM = Weights + KV Cache + Overhead

Weights = 140.6B × 4.8 bits ÷ 8 = 84.4 GB

KV Cache + Overhead ≈ 0.7 GB (at 2K context + ~0.3 GB framework)

Fit ratings and hardware model lists check this model with room for a 16K-token context, which needs a little more memory.

KV Cache + Overhead ≈ 15.3 GB (at full 66K context)

VRAM usage by quantization

85.1 GB
99.7 GB

Learn more about VRAM estimation →

Can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

No — Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 requires at least 39.4 GB at IQ2_XXS, which exceeds the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090's 32 GB of VRAM.

What's the best quantization for Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

For Mixtral 8x22B v0.1, Q4_K_M (85.1 GB) offers the best balance of quality and VRAM usage. Q5_K_M (101.0 GB) provides better quality if you have the VRAM. The smallest option is IQ2_XXS at 39.4 GB.

VRAM requirement by quantization

IQ2_XXS
39.4 GB
IQ2_M
48.2 GB
Q3_K_M
69.3 GB
Q4_K_M ★
85.1 GB
Q6_K
116.8 GB
BF16
282.0 GB

★ Recommended — best balance of quality and VRAM usage.

Learn more about quantization →

Can I run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 on a Mac?

Yes — Mac Studio M5 Max (48 GB) and 55 other Macs can run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1, the smallest at IQ2_XXS. Apple Silicon uses unified memory, so the model shares RAM with the system. At Q4_K_M you need at least 85.1 GB of usable unified memory (RAM minus macOS overhead), from Mac Studio (M3 Ultra, 96GB).

Can I run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 locally?

Yes — Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 can run locally on consumer hardware. Popular tools include Ollama, LM Studio, and llama.cpp.

How fast is Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

At Q4_K_M, Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 can reach ~62 tok/s on AMD Instinct MI350X. Speed depends mainly on GPU memory bandwidth. Real-world results typically within ±20%.

tok/s = 1000 ÷ (active GB ÷ (bandwidth GB/s × efficiency) × 1000 + layers × routing ms)

Mixture-of-Experts: just the active experts get read for each token, along with a fixed routing cost per layer.

Example: NVIDIA B200 → 23.7 GB active ÷ (8000 × 0.65) = 4.56 ms, plus 56 layers × 0.055 ms = 3.08 ms, so 1000 ÷ 7.64 ms = ~131 tok/s

Estimated speed at Q4_K_M (85.1 GB)

~131 tok/s
~131 tok/s
~95 tok/s

Real-world results typically within ±20%. Speed depends on batch size, quantization kernel, and software stack.

Learn more about tok/s estimation →

What's the download size of Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

At Q4_K_M, the download is about 84.37 GB. The full-precision BF16 version is 281.24 GB. The smallest option (IQ2_XXS) is 38.67 GB.

Which GPUs can run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

No single consumer GPU has enough VRAM to run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 at Q4_K_M (85.1 GB). Multi-GPU or professional hardware is required.

Which devices can run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1?

30 devices with unified memory can run Mixtral 8x22B v0.1 at Q4_K_M (85.1 GB), including ASUS Ascent GX10, Beelink GTR9 Pro (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB), Framework Desktop (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB), GMKtec EVO-X2 (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB). Apple Silicon Macs use unified memory shared between CPU and GPU, making them well-suited for local LLM inference.