What GPU do I need to run microsoft/Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct?

41.9B parameters, published in BF16. View on Hugging Face

41.9B
Parameters
BF16
Native precision
PhiMoEForCausalLM
Architecture
text-generation
Pipeline

Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is published by microsoft on Hugging Face, with 148,130 downloads and 575 likes to date. It's a PhiMoEForCausalLM model built for text-generation, published natively in BF16.

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)
BF16
78.0 GB
93.6 GB
1
$1.16/hr
cheaper alt.
RTX 3060 (simplepod)
8
$0.560/hr
FP8 (quantized)
39.0 GB
46.8 GB
RTX 6000 Ada (vastai)
1
$0.640/hr
cheaper alt.
RTX 5060 Ti (simplepod)
3
$0.300/hr
INT4 (quantized)
19.5 GB
23.4 GB
RTX 6000 (akash)
1
$0.116/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 caveat: requires a quantized checkpoint actually published for this model — check its Hugging Face page before relying on this row.

Cheapest way to run Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct at its published (BF16) precision: 1× RTX PRO 6000 WS on vastai, at $1.16/hr per GPU ($1.16/hr total). Quantizing to FP8 or INT4 (rows above) can cost less, but requires a compatible quantized checkpoint to exist for this model.

Weight-to-VRAM math, the fit rules, and how live prices are normalized: full methodology.

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