What GPU do I need to run meta-llama/Llama-3.1-405B-FP8?
405.9B parameters, published in F8_E4M3. View on Hugging FaceGated
Set up Llama-3.1-405B-FP8Llama-3.1-405B-FP8 is published by meta-llama on Hugging Face, with 488,296 downloads and 124 likes to date. It's a LlamaForCausalLM model built for text-generation, published natively in F8_E4M3, and gated: you'll need to accept the model's terms on Hugging Face before downloading weights.
VRAM required & cheapest live GPU fit
Required VRAM = weight size at each precision, plus a fixed overhead for KV-cache, activations, and fragmentation. Full formula and assumptions: methodology.
| Precision | Weight size | Required VRAM | Cheapest live fit | GPUs needed | Est. $/hr (full fit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP8 (native) | 378.0 GB | 453.6 GB | RTX PRO 6000 | 5 | $6.88/hr |
| INT4 (quantized) | 189.0 GB | 226.8 GB | RTX A6000 | 5 | $1.81/hr |
A GPU is only matched to a row if its hardware supports that precision, and the primary recommendation is always a single-GPU fit when one exists.
INT4 requires a quantized checkpoint actually published for this model, check its Hugging Face page before relying on this row.
Cheapest way to run Llama-3.1-405B-FP8 at its published (F8_E4M3) precision: 5× RTX PRO 6000, at $1.38/hr per GPU ($6.88/hr total). Quantizing to FP8 or INT4 (rows above) can cost less, but requires a compatible quantized checkpoint to exist for this model.
Llama-3.1-405B-FP8: common questions
Can Llama-3.1-405B-FP8 run on a single GPU?
No. At FP8 (native) it needs 453.6 GB of VRAM, more than a single 32 GB desktop card holds. The cheapest capable card in the live feed is a 95.0 GB RTX PRO 6000, and it takes 5 of them.
Do I need approval to download Llama-3.1-405B-FP8?
Yes. meta-llama gates this repository on Hugging Face, so you have to accept its terms with a signed-in account before the weights will download. It does not change the 453.6 GB the model needs once you have them.
Is Llama-3.1-405B-FP8 already quantized?
Yes. It is published in FP8, one byte per parameter, so the 453.6 GB figure is already a quantized footprint rather than a full-precision one. Only INT4 goes below it, at 226.8 GB. A GPU without FP8 tensor cores cannot run it as published, which is why cards here are matched on precision support and not on VRAM alone.
How many GPUs do I need to run Llama-3.1-405B-FP8?
5 at FP8 (native). It needs 453.6 GB of VRAM and the cheapest capable live offer is a 95.0 GB RTX PRO 6000, so 5 of them come to $6.88/hr in total.
Weight-to-VRAM math, the fit rules, and how live prices are normalized: full methodology.
More Llama 3.1 models
- Llama-3.1-405B (405.9B, BF16)
- Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct (405.9B, BF16)
- Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-FP8-dynamic (70.6B, F8_E4M3)
- Meta-Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct-FP8 (70.6B, F8_E4M3)
- Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct (70.6B, BF16)
Related reading: RTX PRO 6000 pricing and specs, The NVIDIA Inception program, explained, Google Colab alternatives for dedicated GPU access, Free GPU credits for students and researchers, and RunPod volume disk vs. network volume, compared.
