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How much VRAM does DeepSeek Coder V2 need?

DeepSeek · 236B params MoE MLA · updated 2026-08-25

Headline answer

At bf16, reference 8K context, batch size 1: 476.8GB of VRAM. The smallest fitting configuration is 2× AMD MI355X 288GB.

VRAM by quantization

DtypeVRAMFits on
bf16 476.8GB 2× AMD MI355X 288GB
fp8 245.5GB 1× AMD MI355X 288GB
awq 129.0GB 1× H200 NVL 141GB
nvfp4 139.0GB 1× B200 SXM 180GB

Context length sensitivity

Same model, same bf16 dtype, batch size 1 — VRAM at longer context windows.

ContextVRAM (bf16)
8K476.8GB
32K478.5GB
128K485.2GB

Model facts

Parameters 236B
Active params 21.0B
Experts 160 (top-6)
Architecture moe · MLA
Max context 163,840

About DeepSeek Coder V2

How much VRAM does a DeepSeek Coder V2 need? At bf16 — the reference precision, no quality loss — a reference 8K-context, batch-1 deployment needs 476.8GB, which is enough to tell you the smallest fitting configuration is 2× AMD MI355X 288GB. That number comes straight out of our GPU calculator's architecture-aware model, the same path the interactive calculator uses, not a size-based estimate. DeepSeek Coder V2 is a DeepSeek model built from 236B total parameters, with only 21.0B active per token via mixture-of-experts routing, and most of that VRAM at batch size 1 is model weights rather than KV cache or runtime overhead — which is exactly why quantization moves the needle so much. Switching to fp8 cuts the weight footprint roughly in half; AWQ (weight-only int4) goes further, at some quality cost on harder tasks; and NVFP4 lands in a similar range to AWQ but with native throughput on Blackwell GPUs instead of an emulated dtype. The table above walks through all four options with the exact VRAM total and the smallest GPU configuration each one unlocks. Context length adds its own pressure on top of the weights: every additional token of context grows the KV cache, so a 128K-context deployment of this model needs meaningfully more headroom than the 8K reference case shown as the headline number — the context-sensitivity table breaks that out at 32K and 128K wherever this model's native window allows it.

Frequently asked questions

How much VRAM does DeepSeek Coder V2 need?

At bf16, reference 8K context and batch size 1, DeepSeek Coder V2 needs 476.8GB of VRAM. The smallest fitting configuration we find is 2× AMD MI355X 288GB.

How many parameters does DeepSeek Coder V2 have?

DeepSeek Coder V2 has 236B total parameters, with 21.0B active per token via mixture-of-experts routing.

Does quantization reduce DeepSeek Coder V2's VRAM requirement?

Yes — switching from bf16 to fp8 brings the total down to 245.5GB, and weight-only int4 formats (AWQ, NVFP4) go further still. See the per-dtype table above for exact numbers.

Where do these VRAM numbers come from?

They're computed by the same calculator engine behind our interactive GPU calculator, from the model's published architecture (layers, hidden size, attention heads, KV cache config) — not a generic per-parameter estimate.

Methodology: VRAM figures are computed by the same calculator engine behind our interactive GPU calculator, from DeepSeek Coder V2's published architecture (layer count, hidden size, attention heads, KV cache configuration) — not a generic per-parameter estimate. Reference scenario: batch size 1, vLLM framework, fp16 KV cache. Page last updated 2026-08-25. These are engineering estimates, not a guarantee — always validate against your actual serving framework and workload before committing to hardware.

Size a full deployment — concurrency, framework, quantization — in the calculator →