BENCHMARK REPORT
Can I Run Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)?
Comprehensive technical verdict based on static weights, dynamic KV Cache (8k baseline context window), and CUDA runtime overhead.
Official Verdict
NO — CUDA OOM
Executive Hardware Compatibility Summary: Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)
Authoritative verdict, memory allocation, and token generation performance:
Direct Answer: CUDA OOM — Deficit of 7.7 GBQwen 2.5 32B Instruct exceeds dedicated physical VRAM and triggers PCIe layer offloading on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB) (16GB). At standard Q4_K_M 4-bit quantization and an 8,192-token context window, total memory demand is 23.75 GB (19.98 GB weights + 2.12 GB dynamic KV cache + 1.15 GB OS & CUDA buffers). Physical VRAM is exceeded by 7.75 GB, forcing 25 transformer layers to offload across the PCIe bus to host DDR RAM. Estimated generation throughput is ~3.2 tokens/sec (~312.5 ms per token) with prompt prefill processing reaching ~416 tok/s.
Run Verdict
CUDA OOM (Offload)
Total Required VRAM
23.75 GB / 16 GB
Decoding Speed
~3.2 tok/s (312.5ms)
Safe Context Window
Offload to RAM
Hardware Architecture & VRAM Topology
TuringNVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB) • 320 GB/s Bandwidth
Token Generation
~3.2 tok/s(312.5 ms)
OOM SPILL
VRAM Utilization Breakdown23.75 GB / 16 GB (148%)
VRAM Limit (16G)
19.98G
2.12G
-7.75G Spill
Weights
19.98 GB
KV Cache
2.12 GB
Activation
0.5 GB
OS/Driver
1.15 GB
Overflow
7.75 GB
Hardware Chokepoint: PCIe Bus Throttling Active
GPU VRAM (16 GB)
39 / 64 Layers Loaded
320 GB/s Bus
PCIe 4.0 x16 Bottleneck
31.5 GB/s
-97% Bandwidth Drop
Host DDR5 System RAM
25 Layers Offloaded
+9 GB RAM Siphoned
Why does your generation speed collapse to ~3.2 tok/s? Because for every single generated token, model weights across the 25 offloaded layers must be transferred across the 31.5 GB/s PCIe slot from host system RAM.
Context Window vs VRAM Scaling Curve
Blue line indicates total VRAM demand across context lengths; Red dashed line is physical VRAM ceiling.
CUDA OOM — Deficit of 7.7 GB
oom25/64 layers will spill to CPU RAM, causing severe PCIe bandwidth throttling (est. 3.2 tok/s).
Throughput
~3.2 tok/s
312.5 ms / token
Headroom
-7.75 GB
148% of capacity
Layers Fit
39 / 64
25 on DDR5
Max Safe Ctx
0
Tokens before OOM
Host DDR RAM Status:Fits in DDR RAM (+9 GB used of 32 GB)
Static Permalink:
Open Static Report/can-i-run/qwen-2-5-32b-instruct-on-t4-16gReady-to-Run CLI Commands
# Note: Model requires CPU offloading (39/64 layers on GPU)
ollama run qwen2.5:32bCommands include automatic memory ceiling flags and model layer offload configurations calculated above.
Cloud Hardware Failover
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Hardware Specification Summary
GPU ArchitectureTuring
Memory Bandwidth320 GB/s
Model Parameters32.8B (LLM)
Attention ArchitectureGrouped-Query (GQA)
Prompt Prefill Speed~416 tok/s (TTFT ~19692ms)
Benchmark Context Tested8,192 tokens
Global Compatibility Matrix for NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)
Evaluated at Standard Q4_K_M Precision with 8,192 Tokens Context Window
Compatibility Index
61% (35/57)
33 Pass2 Tight22 OOM
| Model & Architecture | Category | Parameters | Required VRAM | Fit Status | Est. Speed | Simulate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
DeepSeek-R1 (671B Full MoE)MLAMoE DeepSeek | MoE | 671B(37B active) | 411.16 GB | OOM (-395.16G) | ~0.6 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-V3 (671B Base/Chat)MLAMoE DeepSeek | MoE | 671B(37B active) | 411.16 GB | OOM (-395.16G) | ~0.6 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B DeepSeek | LLM | 70.6B | 47.6 GB | OOM (-31.6G) | ~0.7 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B DeepSeek | LLM | 32.8B | 23.75 GB | OOM (-7.75G) | ~3.2 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B DeepSeek | LLM | 14.7B | 11.94 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~25 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B DeepSeek | LLM | 8B | 7.33 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~46 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-8B DeepSeek | LLM | 8.03B | 7.48 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~45.8 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B DeepSeek | LLM | 7.6B | 6.49 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~48.4 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-1.5B DeepSeek | LLM | 1.8B | 2.61 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-Coder-V2 Lite (16B / 2.4B MoE)MLAMoE DeepSeek | MoE | 15.7B(2.4B active) | 11.21 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~153.3 tok/s | Simulate |
DeepSeek-Coder-V2 (236B / 21B MoE)MLAMoE DeepSeek | MoE | 236B(21B active) | 146.23 GB | OOM (-130.23G) | ~1 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 Coder 72B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 72.7B | 48.87 GB | OOM (-32.87G) | ~0.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 72.7B | 48.87 GB | OOM (-32.87G) | ~0.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 VL 72B (Vision Flagship) Qwen | LLM | 72.7B | 48.87 GB | OOM (-32.87G) | ~0.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 VL 7B (Vision) Qwen | LLM | 7.61B | 6.5 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~48.3 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 32.8B | 23.75 GB | OOM (-7.75G) | ~3.2 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 Coder 14B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 14.7B | 11.94 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~25 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 Coder 7B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 7.6B | 6.49 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~48.4 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 Coder 1.5B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 1.54B | 2.45 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 32.8B | 23.75 GB | OOM (-7.75G) | ~3.2 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 14B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 14.7B | 11.94 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~25 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 7B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 7.6B | 6.49 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~48.4 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 3B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 3.1B | 3.59 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~118.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 0.5B Instruct Qwen | LLM | 0.49B | 1.8 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct Llama | LLM | 70.6B | 47.6 GB | OOM (-31.6G) | ~0.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct Llama | LLM | 70.6B | 47.6 GB | OOM (-31.6G) | ~0.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.1 405B Instruct Llama | LLM | 405B | 252.77 GB | OOM (-236.77G) | ~0.6 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct Llama | LLM | 8B | 7.33 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~46 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.2 3B Instruct Llama | LLM | 3.2B | 4.28 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~114.9 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct Llama | LLM | 1.23B | 2.41 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct Llama | LLM | 10.6B | 8.92 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~34.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Llama 3.2 90B Vision Instruct Llama | LLM | 89B | 59.46 GB | OOM (-43.46G) | ~0.6 tok/s | Simulate |
Microsoft Phi-4 (14B) Phi | LLM | 14.7B | 12.01 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~25 tok/s | Simulate |
Microsoft Phi-3.5 Mini (3.8B) Phi | LLM | 3.82B | 6.91 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~96.3 tok/s | Simulate |
Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct Gemma | LLM | 9.2B | 9.79 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~40 tok/s | Simulate |
Mistral Small 3 (24B Instruct) Mistral | LLM | 24B | 18.12 GB | OOM (-2.12G) | ~5.9 tok/s | Simulate |
Mistral NeMo (12B Instruct) Mistral | LLM | 12.2B | 10.15 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~30.1 tok/s | Simulate |
Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3 Mistral | LLM | 7.25B | 6.88 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~50.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Codestral 22B (Mistral AI) Mistral | LLM | 22.2B | 17.02 GB | OOM (-1.02G) | ~6.9 tok/s | Simulate |
Mistral Large 2 (123B) Mistral | LLM | 123B | 79.77 GB | OOM (-63.77G) | ~0.6 tok/s | Simulate |
Mixtral 8x7B (MoE 47B)MoE Mistral | MoE | 46.7B(12.9B active) | 31.15 GB | OOM (-15.15G) | ~6.1 tok/s | Simulate |
Mixtral 8x22B (MoE 141B)MoE Mistral | MoE | 141B(39B active) | 89.67 GB | OOM (-73.67G) | ~0.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Pixtral 12B (Multimodal) Mistral | LLM | 12.4B | 10.28 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~29.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Gemma 2 27B Instruct Gemma | LLM | 27.2B | 21.26 GB | OOM (-5.26G) | ~4.3 tok/s | Simulate |
Google Gemma 2 2B Instruct Gemma | LLM | 2.6B | 3.84 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~141.5 tok/s | Simulate |
GLM-4 9B Chat (Zhipu AI) GLM | LLM | 9.4B | 7.79 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~39.1 tok/s | Simulate |
FLUX.1 [dev] (12B DiT) FLUX | ImageGen | 12B | 15.68 GB | Tight Fit | ~30.7 tok/s | Simulate |
FLUX.1 [schnell] (4-step) FLUX | ImageGen | 12B | 15.68 GB | Tight Fit | ~30.7 tok/s | Simulate |
Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL 1.0) SDXL | ImageGen | 3.5B | 7.51 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~105.1 tok/s | Simulate |
Stable Diffusion 1.5 (Classic) SD | ImageGen | 1B | 5.78 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
Whisper Large v3 (1.5B) Whisper | Audio | 1.5B | 3.64 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
Kokoro 82M (Text-to-Speech) Kokoro | Audio | 0.082B | 1.56 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
Wan2.1 (14B Text-to-Video) Wan | ImageGen | 14.2B | 18.72 GB | OOM (-2.72G) | ~9.6 tok/s | Simulate |
Wan2.1 (1.3B Video) Wan | ImageGen | 1.3B | 7.28 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
HunyuanVideo (13B Video DiT) Hunyuan | ImageGen | 13B | 19.69 GB | OOM (-3.69G) | ~9.6 tok/s | Simulate |
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large (8B) SD | ImageGen | 8.1B | 13.3 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~45.4 tok/s | Simulate |
BAAI BGE-M3 (Multilingual Embedding) BAAI | LLM | 0.56B | 2.54 GB | 100% VRAM Fit | ~180 tok/s | Simulate |
Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct Context Scaling Matrix on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)
Dynamic KV Cache footprint and generation throughput measured across sequence lengths (Q4_K_M weights):
| Context Window | KV Cache Memory | Total VRAM Demand | Compatibility Status | Offloaded Layers | Est. Generation Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,048 tokens (2k) | 0.53 GB | 22.16 GB / 16 GB | CUDA OOM | 20 layers on RAM | ~3.6 tok/s |
| 4,096 tokens (4k) | 1.06 GB | 22.69 GB / 16 GB | CUDA OOM | 22 layers on RAM | ~3.5 tok/s |
| 8,192 tokens (8k)Standard Baseline | 2.12 GB | 23.75 GB / 16 GB | CUDA OOM | 25 layers on RAM | ~3.2 tok/s |
| 16,384 tokens (16k) | 4.24 GB | 25.87 GB / 16 GB | CUDA OOM | 32 layers on RAM | ~2.7 tok/s |
| 32,768 tokens (32k) | 8.48 GB | 30.11 GB / 16 GB | CUDA OOM | 46 layers on RAM | ~1.6 tok/s |
Hardware Compatibility Q&A: Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)
Technical answers for memory allocation, CUDA overhead, and execution parameters.
Can NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB) run Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct?
CUDA OOM — Deficit of 7.7 GB. 25/64 layers will spill to CPU RAM, causing severe PCIe bandwidth throttling (est. 3.2 tok/s). At an 8k context window, total VRAM demand is 23.75 GB compared to NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)'s 16 GB frame buffer.
How much VRAM does Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct require?
At standard Q4_K_M quantization and 8k context, Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct requires approximately 23.75 GB of VRAM. This includes 19.98 GB for model weights, 2.12 GB for dynamic KV cache (Grouped-Query Attention (GQA)), 0.5 GB for activation buffers, and 1.15 GB for OS display and CUDA runtime overhead.
What generation speed (tokens/sec) can I expect on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)?
Estimated autoregressive token generation speed is ~3.2 tokens per second with a per-token latency of ~312.5 ms, powered by 320 GB/s memory bandwidth. Prompt prefill processing reaches ~416 tok/s (TTFT ~19692 ms).
What causes CUDA Out-of-Memory (OOM) when running Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct?
CUDA OOM occurs when total memory consumption exceeds NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)'s 16 GB physical VRAM. While model weights stay static, the KV cache grows with every conversation token. When VRAM fills up, inference engines (like Ollama or llama.cpp) must offload remaining layers across the PCIe bus (31.5 GB/s) to host system RAM, causing generation speed to drop sharply.
How do I run Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct locally on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)?
You can run Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct directly with Ollama using "ollama run qwen-2-5-32b-instruct". For advanced serving with vLLM or llama.cpp, copy the ready-to-run CLI commands in the CLI Commands section above with optimal context, quantization, and GPU layer offload parameters.
Related Hardware Benchmarks & Model Alternatives
Compare Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct and NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB) against alternative configurations:
Recommended Alternative GPUs for Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct
Explore how Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct performs across other budget, midrange, and flagship architectures:
Other Popular Models You Can Run on NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)
Verified open-weights LLMs and image models that fit within NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB)'s 16GB VRAM:
Dual GPU Showdown: NVIDIA Tesla T4 (16GB) vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
Compare memory bandwidth (320 GB/s vs 1008 GB/s), VRAM headroom (16GB vs 24GB), and inference speed head-to-head.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Model weights are only one part of total VRAM consumption. When you prompt a model, the KV Cache (Key-Value Cache) stores all historical tokens. At 32k or 64k context, standard GQA attention can demand an additional 4GB to 12GB of VRAM! Combined with activation buffers and OS background consumption (0.8GB on Windows), total memory spikes beyond hardware capacity.