HARDWARE FIT CHECK • Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)7.87 GB / 24 GB VRAM

Can I Run Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)?

Full VRAM footprint analysis, tokens/sec generation benchmark, and copy-paste Ollama & vLLM runtime commands for running Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct (9.2B) on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X) (24 GB).

✓ FITS IN VRAM12.1 GB (50%)~93 t/s

Target Hardware & Model

interactive
High-efficiency 9B model outperforming older 13B architectures on 12GB–16GB GPUs
Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)

✓ Fits Comfortably in VRAM

✓ FITS IN VRAM
Required VRAM
12.1 GB
50% of hardware capacity (24 GB)
Est. Decode Speed
~93 tok/s
Dense model @ 936 GB/s
Available Headroom
+11.9 GB
Safe for OS display & full context
Memory Allocation & Headroom
12.1 GB allocated of 24 GB capacity
50% utilized
Weights: 5.52 GB
KV: (32K): 5.64 GB
Overhead: 0.94 GB
Free Headroom: +11.9 GB
Architecture & Throughput Transparency: Single-user decode speed (~93 tok/s) is memory-bandwidth bound at batch size = 1 on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X) (936 GB/s). Prompt prefill / TTFT (~1,349 tok/s) is compute-bound and utilizes GPU Tensor cores. Actual latency varies with FlashAttention-2 and runtime engine (Ollama/vLLM/llama.cpp).

Local Hardware Configurations & Pricing

High-bandwidth VRAM specs and current market prices
Consumer GPU
32 GB VRAM

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 (32GB GDDR7)

Maximum tokens/sec on 27B–35B models & Blackwell FP4 quantization

1792 GB/s575W TDP
Consumer GPU
24 GB VRAM

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (24GB GDDR6X)

The 24GB CUDA enthusiast standard for 14B–32B Q4_K_M models

1008 GB/s450W TDP
Multi-GPU Rig
48 GB VRAM

2x NVIDIA RTX 3090 Dual Rig (48GB Total VRAM)

Best price-to-VRAM homelab rig for Llama 3.3 70B Q4_K_M & Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Q8_0

1648 GB/s700W TDP
Consumer GPU
24 GB VRAM

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)

The #1 budget 24GB card for local LLMs, running 14B–32B models and Q4 70B quantized

936 GB/s350W TDP

Quantization Precision Matrix

32K ctx • KV: Q8_0
QuantizationWeightsKV CacheTotal VRAMEst. SpeedFit Status
FP1616 bpw18.4 GB5.64 GB25.43 GB (106%)~7 t/sPARTIAL
Q8_08.5 bpw9.75 GB5.64 GB16.48 GB (69%)~57 t/sFITS
Q6_K6.56 bpw7.54 GB5.64 GB14.19 GB (59%)~71 t/sFITS
Q5_K_M5.68 bpw6.53 GB5.64 GB13.15 GB (55%)~81 t/sFITS
Q4_K_M4.8 bpw5.52 GB5.64 GB12.1 GB (50%)~93 t/sFITS
FP44.25 bpw4.88 GB5.64 GB11.44 GB (48%)~103 t/sFITS
IQ3_XS3.3 bpw3.77 GB5.64 GB10.29 GB (43%)~128 t/sFITS
FAQ & Reference

Frequently Asked Questions: Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)

How much VRAM does Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct need on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)?

At standard 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M) with 32K context, Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct requires 7.87 GB of total VRAM (weights + KV cache + CUDA runtime overhead).

What inference speed will Google Gemma 2 9B Instruct achieve on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)?

Based on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X)'s 936 GB/s memory bandwidth, expected decode speed is approximately 104 tokens per second.

Can I expand context beyond 32K tokens?

Each additional 32K tokens of context requires additional KV cache memory. For longer context windows, consider 8-bit or 4-bit KV cache quantization.