How much VRAM does Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B need?

Q4_K_M is exactly 986,051,360 bytes (0.92 GiB) in weights. Add the KV cache, which depends on context length, plus roughly half a gigabyte of runtime overhead.

How large is Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B's KV cache?

0.88 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.

dphn · text

Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B

dphn/Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B

Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B at Q4_K_M is exactly 986,051,360 bytes (0.92 GiB / 0.99 GB) — an effective 5.110 bits per weight, not the nominal 4. Its KV cache at 32K is 0.88 GiB.

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

Parameters

1.5B

Architecture

qwen2

28 layers

Context

131,072

native (config.json)

License

apache-2.0

Shipped quantizations

● exact bytes, summed from published files

Quant	Size●	Exact bytes●	Effective bpw●	Tensors●	Publisher
IQ2_M	0.56 GiB	601,057,856	3.115	—	bartowski
Q2_K	0.63 GiB	676,308,032	3.505	—	bartowski
IQ3_XS	0.68 GiB	731,702,336	3.792	—	bartowski
Q2_K_L	0.68 GiB	732,828,224	3.798	—	bartowski
Q3_K_S	0.71 GiB	760,947,776	3.943	—	bartowski
IQ3_M	0.72 GiB	776,667,200	4.025	—	bartowski
Q3_K_M	0.77 GiB	824,181,824	4.271	—	bartowski
Q3_K_L	0.82 GiB	880,165,952	4.561	—	bartowski
IQ4_XS	0.83 GiB	895,734,848	4.642	—	bartowski
IQ4_NL	0.87 GiB	936,334,400	4.852	—	bartowski
Q4_0	0.87 GiB	937,538,624	4.859	—	bartowski
Q4_K_S	0.88 GiB	940,315,712	4.873	—	bartowski
Q4_K_M	0.92 GiB	986,051,360	5.110	—	itlwas
Q4_K_M	0.92 GiB	986,051,648	5.110	—	bartowski
Q4_1	0.95 GiB	1,016,845,376	5.270	—	bartowski
Q4_K_L	0.97 GiB	1,042,571,840	5.403	—	bartowski
Q5_K_S	1.02 GiB	1,098,732,608	5.694	—	bartowski
Q5_K_M	1.05 GiB	1,125,053,504	5.830	—	bartowski
Q5_K_L	1.10 GiB	1,181,573,696	6.123	—	bartowski
Q6_K	1.19 GiB	1,272,742,976	6.596	—	bartowski
Q6_K_L	1.24 GiB	1,329,263,168	6.889	—	bartowski
Q8_0	1.53 GiB	1,646,576,192	8.533	—	bartowski
F16	2.88 GiB	3,093,672,512	16.032	—	bartowski
F32	5.76 GiB	6,180,811,040	32.031	—	bartowski

KV cache by context

computed per layer

Context	KV cache (f16)●	Flat formula	Overstated by	Full / windowed / recurrent
4,096	0.11 GiB	0.11 GiB	—	28 / 0 / 0
8,192	0.22 GiB	0.22 GiB	—	28 / 0 / 0
16,384	0.44 GiB	0.44 GiB	—	28 / 0 / 0
32,768	0.88 GiB	0.88 GiB	—	28 / 0 / 0
65,536	1.75 GiB	1.75 GiB	—	28 / 0 / 0
131,072	3.50 GiB	3.50 GiB	—	28 / 0 / 0

Compare with

same modality, comparable size

vs Qwen3-4B vs HyperCLOVAX-SEED-Text-Instruct-1.5B vs Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct vs ced-base vs gemma-3-1b-it vs Qwen3-1.7B 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 0.81 GiB. The real file is 0.92 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

1536

Vocab

151,936

Sliding window

none

SWA period

—

MLA

Experts

—

Experts per token

—

use_sliding_window

false

Questions people ask

How much VRAM does Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B need?: Q4_K_M is exactly 986,051,360 bytes (0.92 GiB) in weights. Add the KV cache, which depends on your context length, plus roughly half a gigabyte of runtime overhead.
How large is Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B's KV cache?: 0.88 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 Dolphin3.0-Qwen2.5-1.5B 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.