Qwen3.5 122B-A10B on RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q workstation (96 GB, 300 W)
125.086B (10B active) on 96 GB at 1,792 GB/s. Hardware details · Model details
Memory budget at 8K context
How the estimate is calculated
- Decode: reading 10.0B active parameters at 4.85 bits/weight takes 4.55 ms at 1792 GB/s x 74% achieved efficiency.
- MoE routing penalty of 15% applied: expert gathers are less bandwidth-efficient than a dense sweep.
- Prefill: 190 TFLOPS (FP16) x 2 for native FP8 tensor cores x 0.67 calibrated against measured prefill on this platform x 32% assumed model-FLOPs utilisation, divided by 2 x 35.4B parameters per token.
- Prefill uses 35.4B effective parameters, not the 10B 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.
| Quantization | Weights | Total needed | Utilisation | Fit | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MLX 4-bit | 68.1 GB | 71.9 GB | 81% | Fits | 64K |
Q4_K_Mrecommended | 72.7 GB | 76.7 GB | 87% | Fits | 32K |
Q8_0 | 126.3 GB | 131.8 GB | 149% | Does not fit | 0 |
BF16 | 233.0 GB | 241.7 GB | 274% | 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 9,188 over 5 years, straight-line to a 1,621 residual | $153.13 |
| Electricity 20.1 kWh/month at 0.140/kWh | $2.81 |
| Cost of capital 4.0%/yr on 6,215 average capital employed | $20.72 |
| Monthly cost before tax | $176.65 |
| Electricity tax shield Running costs are deductible business expenses | −$0.59 |
| First-year expensing §179 (100.0%) | −$37.83 |
| Monthly economic cost after tax | $138.23 |
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 | 89.8M/mo | $32 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4 Flash DeepSeek | $0.66 | 57.1M/mo | $50 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4 Pro DeepSeek | $1.98 | 19.0M/mo | $149 | About equal | Different model |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (Together) Together AI | $4.40 | 6.5M/mo | $436 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| GLM-5.3 Z.ai | $4.40 | 8.9M/mo | $321 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic | $5.00 | 10.6M/mo | $268 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| Hardware | Decode | Price | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB) | ~223–320 t/s | €13.999 | Comfortable |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell workstation (96 GB) | ~133–192 t/s | €11.499 | Fits |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra 96 GB | ~112–162 t/s | €6.599 | Fits |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra 512 GB | ~63.6–91.6 t/s | €12.599 | Comfortable |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256 GB | ~63.6–91.6 t/s | €9.599 | Comfortable |
| Mac Studio M5 Max 128 GB | ~57.5–82.8 t/s | €4.799 | Comfortable |
Compare RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q workstation (96 GB, 300 W) against RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell workstation (96 GB) →
Page quality score (why this page is or is not indexed)
10/13 — indexed. Generated pages are gated so we do not ask a search engine to rank a page with nothing computed to say. The directive is emitted in the page head via the metadata API, not in the body, so it is authoritative.
- Has a memory-fit calculation (+3)
- Has a performance estimate (+2)
- Has a price (+2)
- Has an ownership economics calculation (+2)
- Well connected (18 internal links) (+1)