How much VRAM does Mistral NeMo 12B need?

Mistral NeMo 12B requires approximately 0.0 GB VRAM at Q4_K_M quantization with 1K context and 10% overhead. At Q8_0 it needs ~0.0 GB, and at FP16 ~0.0 GB. Use the PCPARTGUIDE VRAM Calculator for exact requirements at any context length and overhead setting.

Can I run Mistral NeMo 12B on a consumer GPU?

Yes, Mistral NeMo 12B can run on consumer GPUs. At Q4_K_M quantization with moderate context length, it fits on a 12 GB GPU. For best performance, use a 16 GB or larger GPU with at least 8 GB VRAM for reasonable context lengths.

What is Mistral NeMo 12B's context window?

Mistral NeMo 12B supports a maximum context window of 131,072 tokens. The default context is 8,192 tokens. Larger contexts require proportionally more VRAM for the KV cache — use the VRAM Calculator to estimate exact requirements at your target context length.

What quantization level should I use for Mistral NeMo 12B?

For Mistral NeMo 12B, Q4_K_M is the recommended quantization — it provides an excellent quality-to-VRAM ratio at ~0.0 GB. Q8_0 offers slightly better quality at ~2× the VRAM. Q4_K_M is the sweet spot for most users.

How does Mistral NeMo 12B compare to similar models?

Mistral NeMo 12B is a 12.0B Dense model from the Mistral family. Browse other Mistral models on the PCPARTGUIDE directory for comparable alternatives with different parameter counts and VRAM requirements. Use the Model Transparency scores to assess documentation quality and reproducibility.

MistralDenseApache 2.0

Mistral NeMo 12B

12.0B

Parameters

128K

Max Context

Dense

Architecture

Jul 18, 2024

Released

Text

Modality

About Mistral NeMo 12B

Mistral NeMo 12B is a collaboration between Mistral and NVIDIA, designed with quantization-aware training. It supports a 128K context window natively and delivers strong multilingual performance. The quantization-aware design means it holds quality better than most models at Q4 and below. At ~6.5 GB VRAM at Q4_K_M, it fits comfortably on 8 GB GPUs and runs fast on 12 GB cards. A strong choice for users who need Apache 2.0 licensing and long context on modest hardware.

MultilingualLong ContextRAGCommercial

Technical Specifications

Total Parameters12.0B

ArchitectureDense

Attention TypeGQA (Grouped Query Attention)

Hidden Dimensiond = 5,120

Transformer Layers40

Attention Heads32

KV Headsn_kv = 8

Head Dimensiond_head = 128

Activation FunctionSwiGLU

NormalizationRMSNorm

Position EmbeddingRoPE

System Requirements

Estimated VRAM at 10% overhead for different quantization methods and context sizes.

Quantization	1K ctx	128K ctx
Q4_K_M0.50 B/W ~97% of FP16	6.36Consumer GPU	26.20Datacenter GPU
Q8_01.00 B/W ~100% of FP16	12.56Consumer GPU	32.41Datacenter GPU
F162.00 B/W Reference	24.97Datacenter GPU	44.81Datacenter GPU

Params

675.0B

Layers

Context

256K

41.0B active

Mistral 7B v0.3

Params

7.3B

Layers

Context

32K

Find the right GPU for Mistral NeMo 12B

Use the interactive VRAM Calculator to see exactly how much memory you need at any quantization level, context length, and overhead setting.

Open VRAM Calculator Best GPU Guide VRAM Guide