Google Gemma-3-12B-IT on NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB (12GB VRAM)
Full FP16 (28.79 GB) exceeds 12 GB VRAM, but 4-bit GGUF Q4_K_M / AWQ requires 11.28 GB (7.62 GB weights + 3 GB KV cache at 8K context), delivering ~30.2 tokens/sec.
🎛️ Interactive VRAM & KV-Cache Tuner
📊 Real-Time Memory Footprint
11.28 GB / 12 GB🚀 Ready-to-Run Launch Command
ollama run gemma3:12b # Or with llama.cpp server (8K context, Flash Attention): llama-server -hf google/gemma-3-12b-it-GGUF -c 8192 -ngl 99 -fa
Need 11.28 GB+ VRAM to run Google Gemma-3-12B-IT?
Recommended cloud setup for 4-bit: RTX 4090 (24GB) (or 28.79 GB for full FP16). Spin up a pre-configured vLLM / Ollama instance in 60 seconds:
| Provider | Best For | RTX 4090 (24GB) | A100 (80GB) | H100 (80GB) | Bonus / Trial | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RunPod | 1-Click vLLM / Ollama Pods | $0.44 / hr | $1.39 / hr | $2.39 / hr | Instant PyTorch / vLLM Pods + Serverless GPU | Deploy on RunPod → |
| Vast.ai | Cheapest Spot GPU Market | $0.29 / hr | $0.95 / hr | $1.79 / hr | Save 50–70% on RTX 4090 / 5090 / A100 rentals | Check Spot GPUs → |
| Vultr Cloud GPU | Enterprise SLA & Bare Metal | — | $1.79 / hr | $2.69 / hr | $300 Free Credit for New Users | Claim $300 Credit → |
| DigitalOcean GPU Droplets | Managed H100 Droplets | — | — | $2.99 / hr | $200 Free Trial (60 Days) | Get $200 Free → |
All Quantization Formats: Google Gemma-3-12B-IT on NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB
| Quantization Format | Bits/Weight | Weights VRAM | KV Cache (8K) | Total VRAM | Fits on 1x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB (12GB)? | Est. Speed | GPUs Needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 / BF16 (Unquantized) | 16 bpw | 25.13 GB | 3 GB | 28.79 GB | No (Over by 16.8GB) | ~1.2 tok/s | 3x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
| FP8 (W8A8 / E4M3) | 8.5 bpw | 13.35 GB | 3 GB | 17.01 GB | No (Over by 5.0GB) | ~2.2 tok/s | 2x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
| GGUF Q8_0 (8-bit) | 8.5 bpw | 13.35 GB | 3 GB | 17.01 GB | No (Over by 5.0GB) | ~2.2 tok/s | 2x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
| GGUF Q6_K (6-bit) | 6.56 bpw | 10.3 GB | 3 GB | 13.96 GB | No (Over by 2.0GB) | ~2.9 tok/s | 2x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
| GGUF Q5_K_M (5-bit) | 5.69 bpw | 8.94 GB | 3 GB | 12.59 GB | No (Over by 0.6GB) | ~3.3 tok/s | 2x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
| GGUF Q4_K_M / AWQ (4-bit) | 4.85 bpw | 7.62 GB | 3 GB | 11.28 GB | Tight (94%) | ~30.2 tok/s | 1x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
| GGUF IQ4_XS (4.25 bpw) | 4.25 bpw | 6.68 GB | 3 GB | 10.33 GB | Yes (86%) | ~34.4 tok/s | 1x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
| GGUF Q3_K_M (3-bit) | 3.91 bpw | 6.14 GB | 3 GB | 9.8 GB | Yes (82%) | ~37.4 tok/s | 1x NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB |
Frequently Asked Questions (Google Gemma-3-12B-IT + NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB)
Can NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB (12GB) run Google Gemma-3-12B-IT locally?
Yes — NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB (12GB) can run Google Gemma-3-12B-IT using GGUF Q4_K_M / AWQ (4-bit). Full FP16 (28.79 GB) exceeds 12 GB VRAM, but 4-bit GGUF Q4_K_M / AWQ requires 11.28 GB (7.62 GB weights + 3 GB KV cache at 8K context), delivering ~30.2 tokens/sec.
How is KV Cache calculated for Google Gemma-3-12B-IT?
Google Gemma-3-12B-IT uses Dense-GQA with 48 transformer layers, 16 attention heads, and 8 KV heads (head dimension 256). At 8,192 tokens in FP16, KV cache consumes 3 GB. Enabling 8-bit KV cache (-ctk q8_0 -ctv q8_0 in llama.cpp or --kv-cache-dtype fp8 in vLLM) cuts this in half to 1.50 GB.