DeepSeek-V4 Flash on NVIDIA DGX Spark 128 GB
304.18B (13B active) on 128 GB at 273 GB/s. Hardware details · Model details
DS4 Q2 (mixed) configuration, requiring approximately 85.1 GB at 8K context. Practical context capacity is 192K. Measured evidence: 18.05 t/s median across 1 comparable run at DS4 Q2 (mixed) and 2K context. MeasuredMemory budget at 8K context
Measured performance · recommended DS4 Q2 (mixed)
Decode, prefill and TTFT below are measured for DS4 Q2 (mixed), the recommended configuration.
Measurement evidence
4 measured runsRows are kept separate when quantization, runtime, context, workload or execution settings differ.
| Quant | Engine | Decode mode | Context | Runs | Median decode | Median prefill | Latest | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
DS4 Q2 (mixed) | DwarfStar bd66c402070042bf0a79ad6ece8242de4c93680c | standard | 2K | 1 | 18.05 t/s | 826 t/s | 6 Sept 2026 | github.com |
DS4 Q2 (mixed) | DwarfStar bd66c402070042bf0a79ad6ece8242de4c93680c | standard | 16K | 1 | 15.10 t/s | 872 t/s | 6 Sept 2026 | github.com |
DS4 Q2 (mixed) | DwarfStar bd66c402070042bf0a79ad6ece8242de4c93680c | standard | 32K | 1 | 14.43 t/s | 856 t/s | 6 Sept 2026 | github.com |
DS4 Q2 (mixed) | DwarfStar bd66c402070042bf0a79ad6ece8242de4c93680c | standard | 64K | 1 | 13.84 t/s | 823 t/s | 6 Sept 2026 | github.com |
How the estimate is calculated
- Decode: reading 13.0B active parameters at 2.29 bits/weight takes 20.34 ms at 273 GB/s x 67% achieved efficiency.
- MoE routing penalty of 15% applied: expert gathers are less bandwidth-efficient than a dense sweep.
- Prefill: 125 TFLOPS (FP16) x 4 for native FP4 tensor cores x 0.85 calibrated against measured prefill on this platform x 18% assumed model-FLOPs utilisation, divided by 2 x 62.9B parameters per token.
- Prefill uses 62.9B effective parameters, not the 13B active in decode: a batch of hundreds of tokens routes across most of the expert pool.
- MoE decode depends on how well the engine batches expert gathers; real results vary more than for dense models.
- Prefill throughput is highly engine-dependent. Flash attention, batch size and quantized KV all move this number substantially, and for sparse mixture-of-experts models it is the least reliable figure we produce.
- This is a calculated estimate, not a measurement. It assumes a single request, a short prompt, no speculative decoding and a warm model already resident in memory.
Estimator version estimator_v1. Stored with every estimated row so old estimates can be regenerated when the model improves.
Why this is rated "Medium" confidence
- First-party reproducible benchmark: +4
- 1 measurement: +0
- Single measurement — agreement cannot be assessed: +0
- Complete run metadata (engine, version, context, source, date): +2
Score 6/10. Aggregated with the median, not the mean, so one outlier cannot move the headline figure.
| Quantization | Resident | Disk | Total needed | Utilisation | Fit | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
DS4 Q2 (mixed)recommended | 81.0 GB | 81.0 GB | 85.1 GB | 81% | FitsResident run observed | 192K |
Q4_K_M | 176.9 GB | 176.9 GB | 183.9 GB | 175% | Does not fit | 0 |
Q5_K_M | 207.5 GB | 207.5 GB | 215.4 GB | 205% | Does not fit | 0 |
Q8_0 | 307.0 GB | 307.0 GB | 317.9 GB | 303% | Does not fit | 0 |
The $100 comparison uses the Codex Pro 5x / Claude Max 5x plans. A fixed planning conversion is used for USD. This compares monthly spend only: subscriptions have usage limits, local hardware has different capabilities and constraints, and taxes or regional pricing may change the charged amount. Prices checked 7 September 2026.
Monthly breakdown
| Depreciation 3,408 over 5 years, straight-line to a 465 residual | $56.80 |
| Electricity 9.5 kWh/month at 0.140/kWh | $1.33 |
| Cost of capital 4.0%/yr on 2,169 average capital employed | $7.23 |
| Monthly cost before tax | $65.36 |
| Electricity tax shield Running costs are deductible business expenses | −$0.28 |
| First-year expensing §179 (100.0%) | −$13.55 |
| Monthly economic cost after tax | $51.52 |
Three different numbers, deliberately
Assumptions and sources (verified 2026-09-07)
- VAT rate: No US federal VAT · verified 2026-09-07
- Marginal tax rate: IRS Publication 542 — Corporations · verified 2026-09-07
- VAT recoverable fraction: site assumption · verified 2026-09-07
- Useful life: IRS Publication 946 — How To Depreciate Property · verified 2026-09-07
- Electricity price: Site assumption · verified 2026-09-07
| Hosted model | USD/1M output | Break-even | API at your volume | Verdict | Comparison type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 Flash Alibaba Cloud | $0.42 | 33.5M/mo | $4 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4.1 Flash DeepSeek | $0.60 | 28.6M/mo | $4 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4 Pro DeepSeek | $1.98 | 7.1M/mo | $17 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (Together) Together AI | $4.40 | 2.4M/mo | $48 | About equal | Different model |
| GLM-5.3 Z.ai | $4.40 | 3.3M/mo | $36 | API cheaper | Different model |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic | $5.00 | 4.0M/mo | $30 | API cheaper | Different model |
| Hardware | Decode | Price | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA DGX H200 (8x H200, 1,128 GB) | ~411–592 t/s | $359,430 * | Comfortable |
| Lenovo ThinkStation PX (4x RTX PRO 6000, 384 GB) | ~150–216 t/s | $58,553 * | Comfortable |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256 GB | ~89.3–129 t/s | $8,647 * | Comfortable |
| Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256 GB | ~51.8–74.5 t/s | $5,674 * | Comfortable |
| NVIDIA DGX Station GB300 (748 GB) | ~50.4–72.6 t/s | $90,082 * | Comfortable |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra 512 GB | ~49.8–71.7 t/s | $11,350 * | Comfortable |
Compare NVIDIA DGX Spark 128 GB against Framework Desktop (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB) →