Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking · 6 GPUs measured first-party · llama.cpp · Updated October 2026
What GPU Do You Need for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking on 6 GPUs, measured first-party: NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition leads at 214.0 tok/s, A100 80GB SXM4 trails at 121 tok/s, and it peaked at 49GB of VRAM.
Benchmarked weights: unsloth/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking-GGUF
NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition
214.0 tok/s on Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking, the ceiling. Measured on our bench. 96GB of VRAM, $8,565 at launch.
- 214.0 tok/s on Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
- 96GB, clears the Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking floor
- Rentable by the hour rather than bought
- 600W board rating
- Datacenter or workstation hardware, not a retail purchase
What GPU Do You Need for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?, tok/s by GPU
Efficiency: tok/s per 100W drawn
Power is the average pulled during the run, sampled at 1Hz. The fastest card is often not the one here, and for anything left running this is the number that shows up on the bill.
Value: tok/s per $1,000 of MSRP
Launch price, not street price, so it ages. A speed leaderboard always crowns the most expensive card; this is the counterweight.
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking. Measured tokens per second by GPU
| GPU | tok/s | Prompt t/s | tok/W | Avg power |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition | 214 | 4456.8 | 1.58 | 135.3 W |
| NVIDIA H200 | 201.1 | 3420.4 | 1.26 | 159.7 W |
| NVIDIA B300 | 200.6 | 2512.7 | 0.7 | 287.0 W |
| NVIDIA H100 80GB HBM3 | 191.1 | 3350.5 | 1.29 | 147.9 W |
| NVIDIA B200 | 188.8 | 3522.6 | 0.66 | 288.2 W |
| NVIDIA A100 80GB SXM4 | 121 | 2018.1 | 0.95 | 127.5 W |
What the numbers show. Across 6 GPUs measured on our own bench, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition is fastest at 214 tok/s. The slowest, A100 80GB SXM4, manages 121, so the spread is 1.8x from top to bottom.
How it compares. H100 80GB HBM3: Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking 191.1 tok/s, Qwen3-Coder-Next-abliterated 190.3, Qwen3-Coder-Next 193.8 (80B), Qwen3-Coder-Next 188.2, Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking 188.1. 1 of 4 beat Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking here.
Cost on a rented GPU. 1M generated tokens of Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking: $1.40 on a RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition ($1.08/hr, 78 min).
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking: cost per 1M generated tokens on rented GPUs
| GPU | Cheapest rate | Speed (tok/s) | Cost per 1M generated tokens |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition | $1.08/hr | 214 | $1.40 |
| NVIDIA A100 80GB SXM4 | $0.95/hr | 121 | $2.17 |
| NVIDIA H100 80GB HBM3 | $2.14/hr | 191.1 | $3.11 |
| NVIDIA H200 | $3.59/hr | 201.1 | $4.96 |
| NVIDIA B200 | $5.98/hr | 188.8 | $8.80 |
| NVIDIA B300 | $6.94/hr | 200.6 | $9.61 |
Cheapest hourly rate we track on RunPod and Vast.ai, divided by the measured speed. Startup time and storage are extra.
Speed tiers for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking. 30+ tok/s: 6 (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, H200, B300). 30 tok/s is roughly where replies outpace reading.
Reading your prompt. Before Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking writes anything it reads the input: 4456.8 tok/s on the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition (0.9s for a 4,000-token prompt), 2018.1 on the A100 80GB SXM4 (2.0s). Long documents and big code files feel this number more than the generation speed.
VRAM for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking. Measured peak 46.5GB, so 80GB is the smallest common card size; smallest card it ran on: H100 80GB HBM3 (80GB). With long context: Q4_K_M 61GB (tested), Q2_K 37GB, Q3_K_M 49GB, Q5_K_M 72GB, Q6_K 83GB.
Power on Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking. Most efficient: RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, 135W, 0.18 kWh per 1M generated tokens. Hungriest: B200, 288W, 0.42 kWh. At $0.15/kWh: $0.026 per 1M generated tokens.
Our verdict
Fastest on Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking: NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, 214.0 tok/s. Cheapest to rent per job: NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, $1.40 per 1M generated tokens.
FAQ
- What GPU do I need to run Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?
- About 49GB. Smallest card that ran it: NVIDIA H100 80GB HBM3 (80GB).
- How much does it cost to run Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking in the cloud?
- $1.40 per 1M generated tokens on a NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition at $1.08/hr, cheapest of 6 rentable cards we measured.
- Can I run Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking on a 12GB, 16GB or 24GB card?
- It used 46.5GB at the precision we tested. 12GB: no; 16GB: no; 24GB: no.
- Is the H100 80GB HBM3 or the A100 80GB SXM4 faster for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?
- The H100 80GB HBM3: 191.1 vs 121.0 tok/s, 58% faster on our bench.
How we test
llama.cpp llama-bench at Q4_K_M, 512-token prompt and 128 generated tokens, three runs after a warmup, full GPU offload, with power and VRAM sampled throughout. Token generation is memory-bandwidth-bound, so the ranking tracks bandwidth closely, which makes it a fair guide to cards we haven't run yet.