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Can the RTX A6000 48GB Run DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 70B?

Runs

Yes. DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 70B at Q4_K_M is a 42.5 GB download (Hugging Face file listing for bartowski/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B-GGUF), and the RTX A6000 48GB has 48 GB of VRAM, leaving about 5.5 GB for the KV cache and runtime. Published runs put generation at a median of 13.9 tokens per second across 2 cited measurements. Fastest cited run: LocalScore (Mozilla Builders).

Model file42.5 GBQ4_K_M
VRAM48 GBRTX A6000 48GB
Headroom5.5 GBafter weights
Median speed13.9 tok/s2 cited runs
Bandwidth ceiling~18 tok/s768 GB/s ÷ 42.52 GB

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Published runs for DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 70B on the RTX A6000 48GB

GenerationQuantRuntimeContextSourceDate
14.1 tok/s Q4_K_M llama.cpp — LocalScore (Mozilla Builders)labelled "DeepSeek-R1 70B Distill" 2026-02-10
13.7 tok/s q4_0 ollama — DatabaseMartlabelled "deepseek-r1:70b" 2025-02-01

More about this pair

How much VRAM does DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 70B need?

The Q4_K_M file is 42.5 GB. Add roughly 1.5 GB for the runtime and an ~8K-token context, so about 44 GB of VRAM holds it comfortably. Longer contexts grow the KV cache and need more.

What speed does DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 70B reach on the RTX A6000 48GB?

The fastest published run is 14.1 tokens per second (LocalScore (Mozilla Builders), Q4_K_M, llama.cpp); the median of 2 cited runs is 13.9 tok/s. Generation reads every weight once per token, so the RTX A6000 48GB's 768 GB/s of memory bandwidth divided by the 42.52 GB file puts the theoretical ceiling near 18 tokens per second. That is an upper bound, not a speed estimate: kernel, launch and compute overhead keep real runs below it, and SpecPicks rejects any published figure above it.

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See the full matrix → · All RTX A6000 48GB benchmarks →

DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama 70B on other GPUs

Other models on the RTX A6000 48GB

How the checks work

The fit is the Q4_K_M file size against the card's VRAM, with 1.5 GB kept for the runtime and an ~8K context. A published run counts only if the pair fits, the run is Q4-class, its source does not call it an estimate, it is under the bandwidth ceiling (memory bandwidth ÷ GB read per token: the whole file for a dense model, only the active experts' weights for a mixture-of-experts model such as gpt-oss-20b or Qwen3 30B-A3B, which is why those can post figures above bandwidth ÷ file size), it is not slower than the same card on a model twice its size, a single run is not slower than the same card on a larger dense model, and it is not one figure pasted across many cards. The whole matrix is downloadable as a CSV under CC BY 4.0.

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This page is editorial synthesis based on publicly available information. No independent first-party benchmarking is reported.