Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE)
Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) needs 19.7 GB of VRAM at Q4_K_M with 8k context, computed from its config.json as checked on 16 October 2026. The smallest card that holds it has 24 GB, and the fastest desktop card that runs it, the RTX 5090, generates at most 655 tokens per second.
- Parameters
- 30.5B, 3.3B active
- Context
- 40,960 tokens
- Licence
- Apache 2.0
- Released
- April 2025
- Config checked
- 16 October 2026
Open Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) in the LLM checker
Which card size runs it
19.7 GB against each memory size. A model may use 95% of a card, and only what is left over, or missing, is coloured; tight means above 85%, with little room for a longer conversation.
Other quantisations, context lengths or a Q8 KV cache: the VRAM calculator.
Computed 16 October 2026Which GPU to pick
The smallest card here that loads it at Q4_K_M with 8k of context is the RTX 3090 (24 GB): 19.7 GB needed, an estimated 342 tokens per second. For room to work, meaning 32,768 tokens of context while staying under 85% of memory, step up to the RTX 5090 (32 GB), which needs 22.1 GB for that and generates at about 655 tokens per second.
At Q8_0, which is near-lossless, the card is the RTX A6000 (48 GB), needing 34.9 GB. On Apple silicon, a Mac mini M4 Pro holds it with 32,768 tokens of context at an estimated 100 tokens per second; prompt processing is slower than on Nvidia, which long documents make obvious. Among unified-memory desktops, the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 holds it at 32,768 tokens in 22.1 GB, at an estimated 94 tokens per second.
Speed on each card
| GPU | Fits | Est. tokens/s | Feels like | Memory | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H100 SXM | Yes | ≤ 1,225 | faster than you can read | 80 GB | 3,350 GB/s |
| A100 | Yes | ≤ 746 | faster than you can read | 80 GB | 2,039 GB/s |
| RTX 5090 | Yes | ≤ 655 | faster than you can read | 32 GB | 1,792 GB/s |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell | Yes | ≤ 655 | faster than you can read | 96 GB | 1,792 GB/s |
| RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell | Yes | ≤ 492 | faster than you can read | 48 GB | 1,344 GB/s |
| RTX 4090 | Yes | ≤ 369 | faster than you can read | 24 GB | 1,008 GB/s |
| RX 7900 XTX | Yes | ≤ 351 | faster than you can read | 24 GB | 960 GB/s |
| RTX 6000 Ada | Yes | ≤ 351 | faster than you can read | 48 GB | 960 GB/s |
| RTX 3090 | Yes | ≤ 342 | faster than you can read | 24 GB | 936 GB/s |
| RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell | Yes | ≤ 328 | faster than you can read | 32 GB | 896 GB/s |
| L40S | Yes | ≤ 316 | faster than you can read | 48 GB | 864 GB/s |
| RTX A6000 | Yes | ≤ 281 | faster than you can read | 48 GB | 768 GB/s |
| RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell | Yes | ≤ 246 | faster than you can read | 24 GB | 672 GB/s |
| Radeon AI PRO R9700 | Yes | ≤ 234 | faster than you can read | 32 GB | 640 GB/s |
| Arc Pro B70 | Yes | ≤ 222 | faster than you can read | 32 GB | 608 GB/s |
| Arc Pro B60 | Yes | ≤ 167 | faster than you can read | 24 GB | 456 GB/s |
| RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell SFF | Yes | ≤ 158 | faster than you can read | 24 GB | 432 GB/s |
| RTX Spark | Yes | ≤ 110 | faster than you can read | 128 GB (102 for the GPU) | 300 GB/s |
| DGX Spark | Yes | 100 | faster than you can read | 128 GB (126 for the GPU) | 273 GB/s |
| Ryzen AI Max+ 395 | Yes | 94 | faster than you can read | 128 GB (96 for the GPU) | 256 GB/s |
| RX 7900 XT | No | - | does not fit | 20 GB | 800 GB/s |
| RTX 4060 Ti | No | - | does not fit | 16 GB | 288 GB/s |
| RTX 5060 Ti | No | - | does not fit | 16 GB | 448 GB/s |
| RTX 5080 | No | - | does not fit | 16 GB | 960 GB/s |
| RTX 5070 Ti | No | - | does not fit | 16 GB | 896 GB/s |
| RTX 4080 SUPER | No | - | does not fit | 16 GB | 736 GB/s |
| RX 9070 XT | No | - | does not fit | 16 GB | 640 GB/s |
| RX 9060 XT | No | - | does not fit | 16 GB | 320 GB/s |
| RTX 3060 | No | - | does not fit | 12 GB | 360 GB/s |
| RTX 4070 | No | - | does not fit | 12 GB | 504 GB/s |
| RTX 5070 | No | - | does not fit | 12 GB | 672 GB/s |
| Arc B580 | No | - | does not fit | 12 GB | 456 GB/s |
Single-stream decode, from memory bandwidth at 70% efficiency. Prompt processing and batching not included. These are ceilings, not measurements: Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) reads only 1.9 GB of weights per token at Q4, so little that the per-token costs the formula leaves out decide much of the real speed. The 18 figures marked ≤ are where a real runtime falls furthest below the number shown. See the speed estimator for other quantisations and Apple hardware, or every card compared if you are choosing hardware rather than a model.
Computed 16 October 2026Memory by quantisation and context
| Quant | 4,096 ctx | 8,192 ctx | 32,768 ctx |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q8_0 | 34.5 GB · fits 48 GB | 34.9 GB · fits 48 GB | 37.3 GB · fits 48 GB |
| Q5_K_M | 23.4 GB · fits 32 GB | 23.8 GB · fits 32 GB | 26.2 GB · fits 32 GB |
| Q4_K_M | 19.3 GB · fits 24 GB | 19.7 GB · fits 24 GB | 22.1 GB · fits 24 GB |
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B (MoE) is the newer model in this family. It needs about 22.4 GB at the same setting.
Weights at this quant: 17.7 GB at Q4. Every extra 1,000 tokens of context adds about 0.098 GB of KV cache at FP16. Try other settings in the VRAM calculator.
About the model
Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) has 30.5B parameters with 3.3B active per token (mixture of experts), 48 layers and 4 KV heads of dimension 128. The small mixture-of-experts model of the Qwen3 generation, April 2025: 30B of weights, 3.3B read per token. It made "fast and good enough" possible on a single consumer card.
Text only 40,960-token window Apache 2.0 April 2025 3.3B of 30.5B active
Reasoning. Switchable: it can think step by step before answering or reply directly, set per request.
All experts stay in memory; only 3.3B are active per token, so it is fast for its size.
Native context window: 40,960 tokens. Licence: Apache 2.0, a permissive licence. Weights published in April 2025.
Good at
- Speed on a 24 GB card.
- Existing setups and fine-tunes built on it.
Watch out for
- The native window is 40,960 tokens. Qwen documents YaRN scaling to reach 131k, but that is a stretch of a 2025 design, not what it was trained at.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B replaces it with vision, a 262k window and a cache a fraction of the size.
Similar models
The models that need about the same memory as Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) at Q4_K_M and 8k, which makes them the real alternatives on whatever card you have. The context column is what each extra 1,000 tokens costs, and it is where models of the same size differ most.
| Model | Size | Needs | Per 1k context | Window | Released |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) | 30.5B · 3.3B active | 19.7 GB | 0.098 GB | 40k | 2025-04 |
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B (MoE) | 31.6B · 3B active | 19.7 GB | 0.006 GB | 256k | 2026-08 |
| GLM-4.7 Flash 30B-A3B (MoE) | 31.2B · 3B active | 19.8 GB | 0.054 GB | 198k | 2026-01 |
| Granite 4.2 30B | 29.3B | 20.3 GB | 0.262 GB | 128k | 2026-08 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 29.8B | 18.7 GB | 0.013 GB | 128k | 2026-08 |
See every model compared, which models fit on 8 to 96 GB, or the cheapest hour of every cloud card.
Questions
- Can I run Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) on a 24 GB card?
- Yes, at Q4_K_M and 8k context it needs about 19.7 GB, which fits a 24 GB card with room.
- How much VRAM does Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) need at Q8?
- About 34.9 GB at 8k context, or 37.3 GB at 32k. Q8 is near-lossless; use it when it fits.
- What is the context length of Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE)?
- 40,960 tokens natively. That is short by current standards, and it is a limit of the model rather than of your GPU: spare memory does not extend it. Qwen documents YaRN scaling to stretch it further, at some cost in quality on short prompts.
- Is there a newer model than Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE)?
- Yes: Qwen3.6 35B-A3B (MoE), published in April 2026. At the same Q4_K_M and 8k setting it needs about 22.4 GB against 19.7 GB for this one.
- How fast is Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) on an RTX 4090?
- At most about 369 tokens per second at Q4, single stream, which is faster than you can read. That is a ceiling worked out from the card's memory bandwidth, not a measurement, and at a figure this high real runtimes land well below it, because the costs the formula leaves out take a growing share of each token.
- Architecture values from config.json in Qwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B on Hugging Face, checked 16 October 2026. Every figure on this page is computed from those values; check them before buying hardware for this model.
- Estimates assume a single conversation on a card that is otherwise free. A desktop on the same GPU takes 0.5 to 2 GB.