Can the NVIDIA RTX 4060 run Gemma 3 12B?

No

No. Even at Q4_K_M, Gemma 3 12B needs about 11.2 GB, but the NVIDIA RTX 4060 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 4060? Run Gemma 3 12B on a rented GPU instead.

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

RunPodOn-demand GPUs with ready-made templates for Ollama and vLLM.Rent a GPU on RunPod → Vast.aiA marketplace of rentable GPUs, from RTX cards to H100s.Rent a GPU on Vast.ai →

Memory needed by quantization

At 8,192 tokens of context.

QuantQualityMemoryFits?Speed
FP16Full quality28.2 GBToo big—
Q8_0Near-lossless16.8 GBToo big—
Q6_KExcellent13.8 GBToo big—
Q5_K_MVery good12.5 GBToo big—
Q4_K_MGood, most popular11.2 GBToo big—
Q3_K_MNoticeably degraded9.8 GBToo big—
Q2_KHeavily degraded8.4 GBToo big—

How to run Gemma 3 12B anyway

On a rented cloud GPU with enough memory, the same command you'd use locally works:

ollama run gemma3:12b

At Q4_K_M it needs about 11.2 GB, so pick a GPU with at least 16 GB.

GPUs that run Gemma 3 12B comfortably

Check NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB prices →

Models that run well on the NVIDIA RTX 4060