How much VRAM does Qwen2.5-14B need?

Q4_K_M is exactly 8,985,274,080 bytes (8.37 GiB) in weights. Add the KV cache, which depends on context length, plus roughly half a gigabyte of runtime overhead.

How large is Qwen2.5-14B's KV cache?

6.00 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.

Qwen · text

Qwen2.5-14B

Qwen/Qwen2.5-14B

Qwen2.5-14B at Q4_K_M is exactly 8,985,274,080 bytes (8.37 GiB / 8.99 GB) — an effective 4.867 bits per weight, not the nominal 4. Its KV cache at 32K is 6.00 GiB.

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

Parameters

14.8B

Architecture

qwen2

48 layers

Context

131,072

native (config.json)

License

—

Shipped quantizations

● exact bytes, summed from published files

Quant	Size●	Exact bytes●	Effective bpw●	Tensors●	Publisher
Q2_K	5.37 GiB	5,768,140,096	3.124	—	QuantFactory
Q3_K_S	6.20 GiB	6,657,030,848	3.606	—	QuantFactory
Q3_K_M	6.83 GiB	7,336,639,168	3.974	—	QuantFactory
Q3_K_L	7.38 GiB	7,922,203,328	4.291	—	QuantFactory
Q4_0	7.93 GiB	8,514,889,440	4.612	—	QuantFactory
Q4_K_S	7.98 GiB	8,570,595,040	4.642	—	QuantFactory
Q4_K_M	8.37 GiB	8,985,274,080	4.867	—	QuantFactory
Q4_K_M	8.37 GiB	8,988,110,304	4.868	—	itlwas
Q4_K_M	8.37 GiB	8,988,110,304	4.868	—	Sarrusha
Q4_1	8.74 GiB	9,389,175,840	5.085	—	QuantFactory
Q5_0	9.56 GiB	10,263,462,240	5.559	—	QuantFactory
Q5_K_S	9.56 GiB	10,263,462,240	5.559	—	QuantFactory
Q5_K_M	9.78 GiB	10,505,781,600	5.690	—	QuantFactory
Q5_1	10.37 GiB	11,137,748,640	6.033	—	QuantFactory
Q6_K	11.29 GiB	12,121,320,864	6.565	—	QuantFactory
Q8_0	14.62 GiB	15,697,245,216	8.502	—	QuantFactory

KV cache by context

computed per layer

Context	KV cache (f16)●	Flat formula	Overstated by	Full / windowed / recurrent
4,096	0.75 GiB	0.75 GiB	—	48 / 0 / 0
8,192	1.50 GiB	1.50 GiB	—	48 / 0 / 0
16,384	3.00 GiB	3.00 GiB	—	48 / 0 / 0
32,768	6.00 GiB	6.00 GiB	—	48 / 0 / 0
65,536	12.00 GiB	12.00 GiB	—	48 / 0 / 0
131,072	24.00 GiB	24.00 GiB	—	48 / 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 7.74 GiB. The real file is 8.37 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

5120

Vocab

152,064

Sliding window

131072

SWA period

—

MLA

Experts

—

Experts per token

—

use_sliding_window

false

This model declares a sliding window but sets use_sliding_window: false, so the window is not applied. Honouring the field without the flag understates KV for the whole family.

Questions people ask

How much VRAM does Qwen2.5-14B need?: Q4_K_M is exactly 8,985,274,080 bytes (8.37 GiB) in weights. Add the KV cache, which depends on your context length, plus roughly half a gigabyte of runtime overhead.
How large is Qwen2.5-14B's KV cache?: 6.00 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 Qwen2.5-14B 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.