Falcon 40B Instruct needs ~36.6 GB VRAM. NVIDIA L40S 48GB has 48.0 GB. With Q5_K_M quantization, expect ~26 tok/s.
Operating mode
Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.
Current mode
Balanced
Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.
Select quantization to explore
Fit status
Runs well
Decode
26.0 tok/s
TTFT
7459 ms
Safe context
8K
Memory
36.6 GB / 48.0 GB
This setup is broadly balanced for this model.
No major red flags
This recommendation has enough memory headroom and acceptable estimated speed for the selected workload.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | A | Runs well | 26.0 tok/s | 4068 ms | 8K |
| Coding | A | Runs well | 26.0 tok/s | 7459 ms | 8K |
| Agentic Coding | A | Runs well | 26.0 tok/s | 10849 ms | 8K |
| Reasoning | A | Runs well | 26.0 tok/s | 8815 ms | 8K |
| RAG | A | Runs well | 26.0 tok/s | 13561 ms | 8K |
How Falcon 40B Instruct (40B params) fits at each quantization level on NVIDIA L40S 48GB (48.0 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 15.6 GB | Low | B66 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 19.6 GB | Low | B67 |
NVFP4 | 4 | 22.4 GB | Medium | B68 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 24.4 GB | Medium | B69 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 28.8 GB | High | B69 |
Q6_KBest for your GPU | 6 | 32.8 GB | High | B68 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 42.8 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 82.0 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Copy-paste commands to run Falcon 40B Instruct on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "tiiuae/falcon-40b-instruct" \
--hf-file "falcon-40b-instruct-Q5_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Your hardware
| Model | Params | Grade | Decode | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Qwen 2.5 VL 72B | 72B | A | 9.5 tok/s | |
| Qwen3-Coder-Next | 80B | A | 24.4 tok/s | |
 Llama 3.3 70B | 70B | A | 10.2 tok/s | |
 Kimi Linear 48B A3B | 48B | A | 23 tok/s | |
| Llama 3.1 70B | 70B | B | 10.2 tok/s |
Yes, NVIDIA L40S 48GB can run Falcon 40B Instruct with a A grade (Runs well). Expected decode speed: 26.0 tok/s.
Falcon 40B Instruct (40B parameters) requires approximately 36.6 GB of memory with Q5_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Falcon 40B Instruct is Q5_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On NVIDIA L40S 48GB, Falcon 40B Instruct achieves approximately 26.0 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 7459ms using Q5_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Falcon 40B Instruct on NVIDIA L40S 48GB receives a A grade with 26.0 tok/s and 8K context.
On NVIDIA L40S 48GB, Falcon 40B Instruct can safely use up to 8K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 8K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/falcon-40b-instruct-on-l40s-48gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview: