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GPU × use-case guide · Long context

Is the H200 SXM a good GPU for long context?

The H200 SXM is a hopper NVIDIA GPU with 141 GB HBM3e (4800 GB/s), 990 TFLOPS BF16 / 1979 TFLOPS FP8, and a 700 W TDP. Long context workloads care most about raw VRAM for the KV cache — context length, not weights, is what fills the card. Here's how the H200 SXM measures up.

VRAM
141 GB
Bandwidth
4800 GB/s
BF16
990 TFLOPS
Cheapest
$3.49/hr

What models fit on a single H200 SXM?

Weights only, reserving ~25% of the 141 GB for KV cache, activations and fragmentation. ✓ = fits on one card.

ModelBF16FP8INT4
Llama 3.1 8B
Qwen 2.5 14B
Gemma 2 27B
Mixtral 8x7B (MoE)
Llama 3.3 70B
Qwen 2.5 72B
Llama 3.1 405B

Largest single-card fit: Mixtral 8x7B (MoE) at BF16, Qwen 2.5 72B at FP8, Qwen 2.5 72B at INT4. Bigger models need tensor-parallel across 8 cards.

H200 SXM for long context, specifically

Long context is context-heavy, so the KV cache — not the weights — is what fills the 141 GB. On the H200 SXM you'll trade context length against batch size: long prompts mean fewer concurrent requests. Because it runs offline, batch aggressively to push tokens-per-dollar down. Size it precisely on the calculator.

H200 SXM pricing across providers

ProviderOn-demand $/hrReserved $/hr
lambda$3.49$2.69
tensordock$3.8
coreweave$4.25$3.19
runpod$4.69

Verdict

With 141 GB, the H200 SXM is a data-center-class card that comfortably handles long context for models up to Mixtral 8x7B (MoE) at full precision on a single card — a strong pick if your budget supports ~$3.49/hr.

See full H200 SXMspecs & pricing, size your model on the calculator, or compare every GPU on the GPU list.