Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated July 21, 2026
Best all-round pick: Nemotron 70B Instruct
The NVIDIA L40S has 48 GB of VRAM, of which about 48 GB is available to a model. The largest model it can hold is Qwen 2.5 VL 72B Instruct (73B, 45.1 GB at Q4_K_M).
| Model | Score | Memory at Q4_K_M | Context | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nemotron 70B Instruct | 98.3 | 43.4 GB | 125K | Llama Community |
| GLM-5.1 72B | 94.7 | 44.3 GB | 125K | MIT |
| Qwen 3.5 72B | 94.4 | 44.3 GB | 125K | Apache 2.0 |
| Gemma 4 27B ⭐ | 94 | 17.1 GB | 125K | Gemma License (commercial OK) |
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | 93.8 | 43.1 GB | 128K | Llama Community |
| Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct | 93.3 | 44.3 GB | 128K | Apache-2.0 |
| Workload | Recommended on this GPU |
|---|---|
| Coding | Kimi K2.5 (97.7) Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct (97.6) Qwen 3.7 35B-A3B (96.9) |
| General assistant | Nemotron 70B Instruct (98.3) GLM-5.1 72B (94.7) Qwen 3.5 72B (94.4) |
| Reasoning | GLM-5.1 72B (100) Gemma 4 27B ⭐ (98.1) GLM-4.7 / GLM-Z1 GLM-Z1 32B (Reasoning) (97.7) |
| RAG | Gemma 4 31B (95.6) Qwen 3.6 27B (94.5) Qwen 3.7 35B-A3B (93.8) |
| Agents | Ternary Bonsai 27B (91.6) Poolside Laguna XS 2.1 Laguna XS 2.1 33B-A3B (88.7) Kimi K2.5 (88.5) |
| Vision | Qwen 3.5 72B (99.7) Qwen 3.7 35B-A3B (96.5) Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B (95.8) |
Nemotron 70B Instruct is the strongest all-round pick that fits its 48 GB.
Qwen 2.5 VL 72B Instruct — 73B parameters, needing 45.1 GB at Q4_K_M.
About 48 GB of its 48 GB, before the desktop and runtime overhead are accounted for.