Can the NVIDIA RTX 3070 run Gemma 3 27B?
No
No. Even at Q4_K_M, Gemma 3 27B needs about 21.4 GB, but the NVIDIA RTX 3070 has 8 GB usable. You could offload some layers to system RAM, but it will be very slow.
Try other context lengths in the calculator →Run it in the cloud
Too big for the NVIDIA RTX 3070? Run Gemma 3 27B on a rented GPU instead.
Rent a cloud GPU by the hour. No upfront cost, cancel any time.
Memory needed by quantization
At 8,192 tokens of context.
| Quant | Quality | Memory | Fits? | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 | Full quality | 59.6 GB | Too big | — |
| Q8_0 | Near-lossless | 33.9 GB | Too big | — |
| Q6_K | Excellent | 27.2 GB | Too big | — |
| Q5_K_M | Very good | 24.2 GB | Too big | — |
| Q4_K_M | Good, most popular | 21.4 GB | Too big | — |
| Q3_K_M | Noticeably degraded | 18.2 GB | Too big | — |
| Q2_K | Heavily degraded | 15 GB | Too big | — |
How to run Gemma 3 27B anyway
On a rented cloud GPU with enough memory, the same command you'd use locally works:
ollama run gemma3:27bAt Q4_K_M it needs about 21.4 GB, so pick a GPU with at least 24 GB.
GPUs that run Gemma 3 27B comfortably
- NVIDIA RTX 3090 (24 GB)
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (24 GB)
- NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB)
- Apple M2 Pro (32GB)
- NVIDIA RTX 5090 (32 GB)