Can NVIDIA Tesla P40 run Mistral 7B?

7B parameter LLM model on 24GB GDDR5X

Yes — runs at full precision
~9-11 tok/sSlow
SpeedFastest possible inference
QualityMaximum quality, no degradation

VRAM Requirements

Mistral 7B is a 7B parameter model. At full precision (FP16), it requires 14GB of VRAM. Your NVIDIA Tesla P40 has 24GB — enough to run it without any quantization.

FP16 (Full Precision)14GB (10GB free)

Maximum quality, no quantization

Q8 (8-bit)7GB (17GB free)

Near-lossless, ~50% size reduction

Q4 (4-bit)4.5GB (20GB free)

Good quality, ~75% size reduction

Your GPU VRAM: 24GB GDDR5X at 346 GB/s bandwidth
Recommended system RAM: 48GB DDR5 (2x GPU VRAM minimum for model overflow)

What This Means in Practice

With NVIDIA Tesla P40 running Mistral 7B at full precision, you get the highest quality responses with no quantization artifacts. This is ideal for tasks requiring nuanced reasoning, creative writing, and complex analysis. You'll have the best possible experience with this model.

How to Set It Up

Step 1: Install Ollama

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

Ollama is the easiest way to run local LLMs. Works on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Step 2: Download and run Mistral 7B

ollama run mistral:7b

This downloads the model (~14GB). First run takes a few minutes.

Step 3: Verify GPU is being used

nvidia-smi

Check that VRAM usage increases when the model loads. You should see ~14GB used.

NVIDIA Tesla P40 Specs

VRAM24GB GDDR5X
Memory Bandwidth346 GB/s
TDP250W
CUDA Cores3,840
Street Price~$300
AI Rating5/10

About Mistral 7B

Fast and efficient. Runs on virtually any modern GPU.

Category: LLM · Parameters: 7B · CUDA required: No (runs via llama.cpp/GGUF)