Multilingual E5 Large (1024-dim) at FP16 needs 1.1 GB for its weights and 7.6 GB in total at 8K context with 8 concurrent users. That means it fits on a single T4 16GB. Every figure is computed by tokcalc's open-source capacity model.
| GPUs | Total VRAM | VRAM needed | Decode tok/s | Aggregate tok/s | TTFT | Cost / 1M tok | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1× T4 | 16 GB | 7.6 GB | 185.7 | 2229 | 2.30 s | $0.0249 | ✓ |
| 2× T4 | 32 GB | 7.6 GB | 315.7 | 7577 | 1.17 s | $0.0147 | ✓ |
| 4× T4 | 64 GB | 7.6 GB | 631.4 | 30309 | 597.9 ms | $0.007332 | ✓ |
| 8× T4 | 128 GB | 7.6 GB | 1263 | 121234 | 314.0 ms | $0.003666 | ✓ |
| Context | Concurrent users | KV per request | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4K | 36 | 412.3 MB | ✓ fits |
| 8K | 18 | 824.6 MB | ✓ fits |
| 33K | 4 | 3.22 GB | ✓ fits |
| 66K | 2 | 6.44 GB | ✓ fits |
| 131K | 1 | 12.88 GB | ✓ fits |
| GPU | GPUs | Aggregate tok/s | Cost / 1M tok |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 3080 10GB | 1× | 5293 | $0.0105 |
| RTX 3090 24GB | 1× | 6519 | $0.0107 |
| RTX 5090 32GB | 1× | 12480 | $0.0111 |
| RTX 4090 24GB | 1× | 7020 | $0.0158 |
| RTX 4080 16GB | 1× | 4993 | $0.0167 |
| AMD MI300X 192GB | 1× | 36911 | $0.0188 |
Yes. Multilingual E5 Large (1024-dim) at FP16 needs 7.6 GB including the KV cache, and T4 16GB has 16 GB — so it fits on a single GPU.
185.7 tokens/sec per stream and 2229 tok/s aggregate with continuous batching at 8 concurrent users. Time to first token is 2.30 s, and inter-token latency is 5.4 ms.
$0.0249 per 1M output tokens at 1× T4 16GB ($0.2000/hr). That is the marginal hardware cost — add idle capacity, ops, and egress for the real figure.
1.1 GB for the weights at FP16, plus 6.4 GB of KV cache for 8 concurrent requests at 8K context — 7.6 GB total. Every extra concurrent user at long context costs more, so leave headroom.
It works. Compare $0.0249 per 1M tokens against the alternatives below — the cheapest option that fits the same workload is 1× RTX 3080 10GB at $0.0105, and the fastest is 1× Cerebras CS-3 (WSE-3) at 139286 tok/s.
Same formulas, your context length, concurrency, and quantisation.