Gemma on NVIDIA Ampere
Can I run Gemma 3 27B on an RTX 3060 12GB?
Not at Q4_K_M — it needs 17.5 GB against 10.5 GB available. You would need 2 of these cards.
Won't fit
17.5 GB of 10.5 GB · 167%018 GB
Weights
15.6 GB
KV cache
1.1 GB
Runtime overhead
0.8 GB
Over the limit
7.0 GB
Short by 7.0 GB. You can run it with 34 of 62 layers on the RTX 3060 12GB and the rest in system RAM, at roughly 4.45 tok/s — usable for batch work, painful for chat. A smaller quantisation or a shorter context is usually the better trade.
Generation4.45tok/s
Prompt processing192tok/s
Max context0tokens
KV per 1K tokens0GB
Every quantisation of Gemma 3 27B on a RTX 3060 12GB
Highlighted row is the highest quality that still fits at 8K context.
| Quantisation | bpw | Weights | Total | Verdict | Max ctx | tok/s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 / BF16 | 16.00 | 51.0 GB | 53.0 GB | Won't fit | — | 0.89 |
| INT8 / W8A8 | 8.50 | 26.8 GB | 28.7 GB | Won't fit | — | 1.94 |
| Q8_0 (GGUF) | 8.50 | 26.8 GB | 28.7 GB | Won't fit | — | 1.94 |
| FP8 (E4M3) | 8.00 | 25.5 GB | 27.4 GB | Won't fit | — | 2.07 |
| Q6_K | 6.56 | 20.9 GB | 22.9 GB | Won't fit | — | 2.76 |
| Q5_K_M | 5.67 | 18.1 GB | 20.0 GB | Won't fit | — | 3.44 |
| Q5_K_S | 5.52 | 17.6 GB | 19.5 GB | Won't fit | — | 3.61 |
| Q4_K_M | 4.85 | 15.6 GB | 17.5 GB | Won't fit | — | 4.45 |
| AWQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 15.5 GB | 17.4 GB | Won't fit | — | 4.48 |
| GPTQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 15.5 GB | 17.4 GB | Won't fit | — | 4.48 |
| MXFP4 | 4.25 | 15.5 GB | 17.4 GB | Won't fit | — | 4.48 |
| Q4_K_S | 4.58 | 14.8 GB | 16.7 GB | Won't fit | — | 4.80 |
| Q4_0 | 4.55 | 14.7 GB | 16.6 GB | Won't fit | — | 4.95 |
| IQ4_XS | 4.25 | 13.8 GB | 15.7 GB | Won't fit | — | 5.54 |
| Q3_K_M | 3.91 | 12.7 GB | 14.7 GB | Won't fit | — | 6.49 |
| IQ3_M | 3.70 | 12.1 GB | 14.0 GB | Won't fit | — | 7.23 |
| IQ3_XXS | 3.06 | 10.2 GB | 12.1 GB | Won't fit | — | 11.8 |
| Q2_K | 2.63 | 8.9 GB | 10.8 GB | Won't fit | 4K | 19.0 |
| IQ2_XXS | 2.06 | 7.1 GB | 9.1 GB | Runs comfortably | 24K | 28.3 |
| IQ1_M | 1.75 | 6.2 GB | 8.1 GB | Runs comfortably | 35K | 32.1 |