What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 run?
Build: RTX 3090 + Ryzen 9 5950X + 64GB DDR4 (used market)
Runs comfortably184 models
Full-VRAM resident, with room for context. No compromises.
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 2.4 GBHeadroom: 21.6 GB1680tok/sEstimated
Quant: FP16Context: 8,192VRAM: 19.8 GBHeadroom: 4.2 GBollama run llama3.1:8b38tok/sEstimated
ollama run llama3.1:8bQuant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 14.4 GBHeadroom: 9.6 GBollama run qwen3:8b72tok/sEstimated
ollama run qwen3:8bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 15.8 GBHeadroom: 8.2 GBollama run gemma4:12b84tok/sEstimated
ollama run gemma4:12bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 13.2 GBHeadroom: 10.8 GBollama run qwen3.5:9b112tok/sEstimated
ollama run qwen3.5:9bQuant: MXFP4Context: 2,048VRAM: 19.1 GBHeadroom: 4.9 GBollama run gpt-oss:20b29tok/sEstimated
ollama run gpt-oss:20bQuant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 6.9 GBHeadroom: 17.1 GBollama run llama3.2:3b191tok/sEstimated
ollama run llama3.2:3bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 3.6 GBHeadroom: 20.4 GB593tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 17.6 GBHeadroom: 6.4 GBollama run qwen3:14b72tok/sEstimated
ollama run qwen3:14bQuant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 10.8 GBHeadroom: 13.2 GBollama run qwen2.5:7b82tok/sEstimated
ollama run qwen2.5:7bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 2.1 GBHeadroom: 21.9 GB3732tok/sEstimated
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 19.5 GBHeadroom: 4.5 GBollama run mistral-small:24b42tok/sEstimated
ollama run mistral-small:24bRuns with tradeoffs73 models
Tight VRAM, partial CPU offload, or context-limited.
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 50.4 GBHeadroom: 12.0 GB- • Partial CPU offload: ~52% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run qwen3:30b1tok/sEstimated
- • Partial CPU offload: ~52% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run qwen3:30bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 23.9 GBHeadroom: 0.1 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.1 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen2.5-coder:32b31tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.1 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen2.5-coder:32bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 23.0 GBHeadroom: 1.0 GB- • Tight VRAM fit — only 1.0 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen3.6:27b37tok/sEstimated
- • Tight VRAM fit — only 1.0 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen3.6:27bQuant: Q5_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 53.8 GBHeadroom: 8.6 GB- • Partial CPU offload: ~55% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run llama3.3:70b1tok/sEstimated
- • Partial CPU offload: ~55% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run llama3.3:70bQuant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 53.5 GBHeadroom: 8.9 GB- • Partial CPU offload: ~55% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run qwen3:32b1tok/sEstimated
- • Partial CPU offload: ~55% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run qwen3:32bQuant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 52.0 GBHeadroom: 10.4 GB- • Partial CPU offload: ~54% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run gemma4:31b1tok/sEstimated
- • Partial CPU offload: ~54% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run gemma4:31bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 36.8 GBHeadroom: 25.6 GB- • Partial CPU offload: ~35% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run qwen3-coder:30b3tok/sEstimated
- • Partial CPU offload: ~35% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run qwen3-coder:30bQuant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 52.6 GBHeadroom: 9.8 GB- • Partial CPU offload: ~54% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run deepseek-r1:70b1tok/sEstimated
- • Partial CPU offload: ~54% of layers run on CPU
- • CPU is the bottleneck — upgrading RAM bandwidth helps more than VRAM here
ollama run deepseek-r1:70bWhat if you upgraded?
Hypothetical scenarios. We re-ran the compatibility engine for each.
+32 GB system RAM
~$80–150
Doubles your CPU-offload working set. Helps when models don't quite fit in VRAM.
Unlocks: 79 new tradeoff
- • Qwen 3 30B-A3B
- • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
- • Qwen3.6 27B
- • Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Upgrade to NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell
see current pricing
32 GB VRAM (vs your 24 GB) plus a bandwidth jump from ~936 GB/s to ~896 GB/s.
Unlocks: 39 new comfortable
- • Qwen 3 30B-A3B
- • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
- • Qwen3.6 27B
- • Qwen 3 32B
Add a second NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
~$899
Tensor parallelism splits the model across both cards, effectively doubling VRAM. Bandwidth doesn't double — runs ~1.5× the single-card speed in practice.
Unlocks: 52 new comfortable
- • Qwen 3 30B-A3B
- • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
- • Qwen3.6 27B
- • Qwen 3 32B
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Won't runtop 5 popular models
Need more memory than you have. Shown for orientation.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
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Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
—
Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (24 GB) + 60% of system RAM (38 GB) combined.
How to read these numbers
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