Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B — VRAM, Speed & Local Setup

Autor: Jakub Rusinowski · Ostatnia aktualizacja: 11 września 2026

Model libraryNemotron Cascade 2 → Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B

31.6B parameters resident — about 19.9 GB at Q4_K_M, so a 24 GB card holds it — with 3.5B active per token, which is why it decodes far faster than its size suggests. 52 layers: 23 Mamba-2 state-space, 23 MoE, and 6 GQA attention. Each MoE layer carries 128 routed experts plus one shared, six routed activated per token. Gold-medal level at IMO 2025, IOI and the ICPC World Finals, reached through post-training rather than scale — and NVIDIA published that recipe. 1M-token context, NVIDIA Open Model License.

Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B needs about 20 GB of VRAM at Q4_K_M — quantized weights plus framework overhead, before any KV cache. On Apple Silicon that figure comes out of unified memory.

Specifications

Parameters31.6 Billion (3.5B active)
Context window1,048,576
ArchitectureHybrid Mamba-2 + MoE + GQA attention
ProviderNVIDIA
LicenceNVIDIA Open Model License
Specified atQ4_K_M
System RAM32 GB
Record updated2026-09-11

Licence

NVIDIA Open Model Licensecommercial use permitted. Weights are downloadable and commercial use is permitted, subject to the licence’s acceptable-use terms.

VRAM and Speed by Quantization

Modelled on a reference NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB), with no KV cache (this record has no published architecture). Speed figures are ESTIMATES from the memory-bandwidth roofline described on the methodology page, not benchmarks we ran — rows marked measured come from published or reader-submitted runs. VRAM here includes the KV cache, so it reads higher than the headline figure above, which does not.

QuantWeightsVRAM neededEst. speedFit on 24 GB
Q2_K10.4 GB11.2 GB~201 tok/s (est.)Fits comfortably
Q3_K_M13.5 GB14.3 GB~185 tok/s (est.)Fits comfortably
Q4_K_M19.1 GB19.9 GB~160 tok/s (est.)Fits comfortably
Q5_K_M22.4 GB23.2 GB~149 tok/s (est.)Tight fit
Q6_K25.9 GB26.7 GB~21 tok/s (est.)Offloads to system RAM (slow)
Q8_033.6 GB34.4 GB~18 tok/s (est.)Offloads to system RAM (slow)
F1663.2 GB64.0 GBWon't fit

Want the memory numbers alone, at every quantization level and your own context length? Use the Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B VRAM calculator.

Buy This HardwareAMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB — 20 GB VRAM · 315 W board powerDeploy in the Cloud NowRTX 4090 on RunPod — from $0.34/hr · rate checked 2026-07

or compare on Vast.ai from $0.35/hr (typical low · varies)

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Recommended GPU

The cheapest catalogued GPU that runs Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B is the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (20 GB).

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AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB
20 GB VRAM · 315 W board power
Ceny w 2026 są niestabilne — sprawdź aktualną ofertę.
Sprawdź cenę na Amazon

How to Run Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B

Install Ollama, then run:

ollama run nemotron-cascade-2:30b

Weights on Hugging Face: nvidia/Nemotron-Cascade-2-30B-A3B.

Best for: reasoning, agentic tasks, math, long context.

Can I Run Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B on My GPU?

Other Nemotron Cascade 2 Sizes

Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B — Frequently Asked Questions

How much VRAM does Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B need?
About 20 GB at Q4_K_M — quantized weights plus framework overhead, before any KV cache. The cache grows with context length and is added on top; the table above folds it in. Apple Silicon counts unified memory toward the same figure.
Does Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B run on an RTX 4090 (24 GB)?
Yes. Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B needs about 20 GB at Q4_K_M, inside a 24 GB card, at an estimated 160 tokens/sec.
How do I run Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B locally?
Install Ollama and run `ollama run nemotron-cascade-2:30b`. That pulls the weights and starts a local OpenAI-compatible endpoint; after the download nothing leaves the machine.
What other sizes does Nemotron Cascade 2 come in?
Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B (20 GB), Nemotron Cascade 2 70B (Unverified Listing) (43 GB). Every size shares the family's training and licence; the larger ones score higher and need proportionally more memory.

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