Can the NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB run Gemma 2 9B?
Yes
QuantQ6_KExcellent
Memory11 GBof 12 GB
Speed~29tokens/s
Yes. The NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB can run Gemma 2 9B fully in VRAM at Q6_K (excellent), using about 11 GB of the 12 GB available, at roughly 29 tokens/second.
Try other context lengths in the calculator →Memory needed by quantization
At 8,192 tokens of context.
| Quant | Quality | Memory | Fits? | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 | Full quality | 21.9 GB | Too big | — |
| Q8_0 | Near-lossless | 13.2 GB | Too big | — |
| Q6_K | Excellent | 11 GB | Fits | ~29 tok/s |
| Q5_K_M | Very good | 10 GB | Fits | ~33 tok/s |
| Q4_K_M | Good, most popular | 9 GB | Fits | ~39 tok/s |
| Q3_K_M | Noticeably degraded | 7.9 GB | Fits | ~48 tok/s |
| Q2_K | Heavily degraded | 6.9 GB | Fits | ~62 tok/s |
How to run Gemma 2 9B on the NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB
With Ollama installed, one command downloads and starts it:
ollama run gemma2:9bOllama's default download is Q4_K_M (about 9 GB here). You have room for Q6_K, which is excellent: pick that GGUF in LM Studio or from Hugging Face.
GPUs that run Gemma 2 9B comfortably
Models that run well on the NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB
Run it in the cloud
Don't want to buy hardware? Run Gemma 2 9B on a rented GPU today.
Rent a cloud GPU by the hour. No upfront cost, cancel any time.