How much VRAM does Athene-70B need?

Q4_K_M is exactly 42,520,393,856 bytes (39.60 GiB) in weights. Add the KV cache, which depends on context length, plus roughly half a gigabyte of runtime overhead.

How large is Athene-70B's KV cache?

10.00 GiB at 32K context with an f16 cache, computed per layer from the model's architecture. Quantizing the cache to q8_0 roughly halves it.

Nexusflow · text

Athene-70B

Nexusflow/Athene-70B

Athene-70B at Q4_K_M is exactly 42,520,393,856 bytes (39.60 GiB / 42.52 GB) — an effective 4.821 bits per weight, not the nominal 4. Its KV cache at 32K is 10.00 GiB.

From the file· summed from 1 file(s)From the file· KV per layer

Parameters

70.6B

Architecture

llama

80 layers

Context

8,192

native (config.json)

License

cc-by-nc-4.0

Shipped quantizations

● exact bytes, summed from published files

Quant	Size●	Exact bytes●	Effective bpw●	Tensors●	Publisher
IQ1_S	14.29 GiB	15,343,483,008	1.740	—	legraphista
IQ1_M	15.60 GiB	16,751,196,288	1.899	—	legraphista
IQ2_XXS	17.79 GiB	19,097,385,088	2.165	—	bartowski
IQ2_XXS	17.79 GiB	19,097,385,088	2.165	—	legraphista
IQ2_XS	19.69 GiB	21,142,108,288	2.397	—	legraphista
IQ2_S	20.71 GiB	22,242,343,040	2.522	—	bartowski
IQ2_S	20.71 GiB	22,242,343,040	2.522	—	legraphista
IQ2_M	22.46 GiB	24,119,294,080	2.735	—	legraphista
IQ2_M	22.46 GiB	24,119,294,080	2.735	—	bartowski
Q2_K_S	22.79 GiB	24,471,943,296	2.775	—	legraphista
Q2_K	24.56 GiB	26,375,108,736	2.991	—	bartowski
Q2_K	24.56 GiB	26,375,108,736	2.991	—	legraphista
Q2_K_L	25.52 GiB	27,401,156,736	3.107	—	bartowski
IQ3_XXS	25.58 GiB	27,469,494,400	3.115	—	legraphista
IQ3_XS	27.29 GiB	29,307,730,048	3.323	—	bartowski
IQ3_XS	27.29 GiB	29,307,730,048	3.323	—	legraphista
Q3_K_S	28.79 GiB	30,912,051,328	3.505	—	legraphista
IQ3_S	28.79 GiB	30,912,051,328	3.505	—	legraphista
Q3_K_S	28.79 GiB	30,912,051,328	3.505	—	bartowski
IQ3_M	29.74 GiB	31,937,034,368	3.621	—	legraphista
IQ3_M	29.74 GiB	31,937,034,368	3.621	—	bartowski
Q3_K	31.91 GiB	34,267,494,528	3.886	—	legraphista
Q3_K_M	31.91 GiB	34,267,494,528	3.886	—	bartowski
Q3_K_L	34.59 GiB	37,140,592,768	4.211	—	bartowski
Q3_K_L	34.59 GiB	37,140,592,768	4.211	—	legraphista
IQ4_XS	35.30 GiB	37,902,661,760	4.298	—	bartowski
IQ4_XS	35.30 GiB	37,902,661,760	4.298	—	legraphista
IQ4_NL	37.30 GiB	40,053,618,816	4.542	—	legraphista
Q4_K_S	37.58 GiB	40,347,220,096	4.575	—	bartowski
Q4_K_S	37.58 GiB	40,347,220,096	4.575	—	legraphista
Q4_K_M	39.60 GiB	42,520,393,856	4.821	—	bartowski
Q4_K	39.60 GiB	42,520,393,856	4.821	—	legraphista
Q4_K_L	40.33 GiB	43,300,190,336	4.910	—	bartowski
Q5_K_S	45.32 GiB	48,657,447,040	5.517	—	bartowski
Q5_K_S3 shards	45.32 GiB	48,657,447,104	5.517	—	legraphista
Q5_K3 shards	46.52 GiB	49,949,817,024	5.664	—	legraphista
Q5_K_M2 shards	46.52 GiB	49,949,817,152	5.664	—	bartowski
Q5_K_L2 shards	47.12 GiB	50,598,279,168	5.737	—	bartowski
Q6_K3 shards	53.91 GiB	57,888,143,552	6.564	—	legraphista
Q6_K2 shards	53.91 GiB	57,888,143,712	6.564	—	bartowski

KV cache by context

computed per layer

Context	KV cache (f16)●	Flat formula	Overstated by	Full / windowed / recurrent
4,096	1.25 GiB	1.25 GiB	—	80 / 0 / 0
8,192	2.50 GiB	2.50 GiB	—	80 / 0 / 0
16,384	5.00 GiB	5.00 GiB	—	80 / 0 / 0
32,768	10.00 GiB	10.00 GiB	—	80 / 0 / 0
65,536	20.00 GiB	20.00 GiB	—	80 / 0 / 0
131,072	40.00 GiB	40.00 GiB	—	80 / 0 / 0

Compare with

same modality, comparable size

vs Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct vs Qwen3.6-27B vs Qwen3.8-27B vs gemma-4-12B-it-qat-q4_0-unquantized vs gemma-4-E4B-it vs Qwen3-30B-A3B-Thinking-2507 All alternatives →Will it fit on my card? →

Why other calculators give a different number

A parameters × bits ÷ 8 estimate puts Q4_K_M at roughly 36.96 GiB. The real file is 39.60 GiB, because a quantization is a mixture and some tensors are always kept at higher precision.

Architecture

from config.json

Layers

Attention heads

KV heads

Head dim

128

Hidden size

8192

Vocab

128,256

Sliding window

none

SWA period

—

MLA

Experts

—

Experts per token

—

use_sliding_window

—

Questions people ask

How much VRAM does Athene-70B need?: Q4_K_M is exactly 42,520,393,856 bytes (39.60 GiB) in weights. Add the KV cache, which depends on your context length, plus roughly half a gigabyte of runtime overhead.
How large is Athene-70B's KV cache?: 10.00 GiB at 32K context with an f16 cache, computed per layer. Quantizing the cache to q8_0 roughly halves it, which is often the difference between a context length fitting and not.
Which quantization of Athene-70B should I use?: Q4_K_M is the usual default. Pick the largest quantization that fits your card at the context you actually need — the table above gives exact sizes for every one published.