About Phi-4
Phi-4 is Microsoft's 14.7B-parameter model released in December 2024, with a 16K-token context window. It uses a classic dense-attention design whose KV cache grows linearly with context: its KV cache is about 1.7 GB at an 8K context, 3.4 GB at 16K, and 3.4 GB at the full 16K window (FP16 cache).
For most people Q4_K_M is the sweet spot — the most popular quality/size trade-off — while Q8 is near-lossless if you have the memory. Totals above include the KV cache and a realistic framework overhead, so they are what you should expect to see in practice rather than just the download size. Weight sizes are calibrated against real GGUF files — see themethodology.
Frequently asked questions
How much VRAM does Phi-4 need?
At Q4_K_M with an 8K context, Phi-4 needs about 13 GB (weights 9 GB + KV cache + overhead). The smallest common hardware that fits is a RTX 5060 Ti 16GB.
Can an RTX 4090 (24GB) run Phi-4?
Yes. An RTX 4090's 24 GB runs Phi-4 at Q8_0 (about 20 GB at 8K context).
Can a Mac run Phi-4?
Yes — Apple Silicon with 24 GB of unified memory or more (macOS lets the GPU use ~75% of it, ~18 GB) runs Phi-4 at Q4_K_M.
Related
VRAM calculator for any model ·Token counter
Last updated 2026-08-03. Architecture figures from the model's published config.json; see themethodology.