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Can the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti run Gemma 3 12B?

RTX 2080 Ti × Gemma 3 12B8K context
YesRuns fully on the GPU
Memory at Q5_K_M10.1 GB of 11 GB
Weights 8.7 GBKV cache 0.9 GBRuntime 0.6 GB
QuantQ5_K_MVery good
Speed~43tokens per second
Max context19Ktokens that fit at Q5_K_M
  1. FP16
  2. Q8_0
  3. Q6_K
  4. Q5_K_M
  5. Q4_K_M
  6. Q3_K_M
  7. Q2_K

Yes. The NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti can run Gemma 3 12B fully in VRAM at Q5_K_M (very good), using about 10.1 GB of the 11 GB available, at roughly 43 tokens/second.

Try other context lengths

Run it with Ollama

With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts Gemma 3 12B:

ollama run gemma3:12b

Ollama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 8.9 GB here). You have room for Q5_K_M, which is very good: pick that GGUF in LM Studio or from Hugging Face.

New to this? Step-by-step setup for the RTX 2080 Ti

Run it in the cloud

No NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti? Run Gemma 3 12B in the cloud.

Rent a cloud GPU by the hour. No upfront cost, stop any time.

Rent a GPU on RunPodRent a GPU on Vast.ai

Memory needed by quantization

At 8,192 tokens of context. The black line marks the 11 GB the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti can use.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality25.9 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless14.4 GBToo big—
Q6_KExcellent11.5 GBToo big—
Q5_K_MVery good10.1 GBFits~43 tok/s
Q4_K_MGood, most popular8.9 GBFits~50 tok/s
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded7.4 GBFits~62 tok/s
Q2_KHeavily degraded6 GBFits~81 tok/s

Measured speed from real RTX 2080 Ti owners

Tokens per second that people measured on their own NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti, next to our estimate.

No one has measured Gemma 3 12B on the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti yet. The speeds above are estimates. Run the benchmark and yours becomes the first real number on this page.

Have an RTX 2080 Ti? Add your real speed

One command times Gemma 3 12B in your own Ollama, shows you exactly what it would send, and asks before sending anything. No sign-up, no personal data.

macOS and Linux

curl -fsSL https://gpufit.dev/bench.sh | sh -s -- gemma3:12b

Windows (PowerShell)

$env:GPUFIT_MODEL="gemma3:12b"; irm https://gpufit.dev/bench.ps1 | iex

How the benchmark works

GPUs that run Gemma 3 12B comfortably

Models that run well on the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti

Frequently asked questions

Can NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti run Gemma 3 12B?

Yes. The NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti can run Gemma 3 12B fully in VRAM at Q5_K_M (very good), using about 10.1 GB of the 11 GB available, at roughly 43 tokens/second.

How much VRAM does Gemma 3 12B need?

About 8.9 GB at Q4_K_M with 8,192 tokens of context, and about 25.9 GB at full FP16 precision.

How fast is Gemma 3 12B on the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti?

Roughly 43 tokens per second at Q5_K_M, estimated from the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti's 616 GB/s memory bandwidth.