Can the RTX 3050 OEM run Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
No. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning needs about 11.8 GB at Q4_K_M (weights plus 1.8 GB runtime overhead), and the RTX 3050 OEM has 8 GB, so it won't fit without offloading layers to system RAM, which is far slower.
Every quantization
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (17.8B) on 8 GB
| Quant | Weights | Needs | Fit | Est. speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 10 GB | 11.8 GB | Too big | - |
| Q5_K_M | 13 GB | 14.8 GB | Too big | - |
| Q8_0 | 19 GB | 20.8 GB | Too big | - |
| FP16 | 36 GB | 37.8 GB | Too big | - |
Estimates. Needs = weights + 1.8 GB for KV cache and runtime at modest context. Speed is single-stream decode scaled from the RTX 3050 OEM's 224 GB/s bandwidth (Estimated from memory bandwidth (llama.cpp decode)). Long contexts need more memory and run slower.
What to do instead
Two ways forward
Cheapest cards that run it
- NVIDIA Tesla P40 - 24 GB, ~$159
- NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB - 12 GB, ~$199
- Intel Arc A770 16GB - 16 GB, ~$229
- Intel Arc B580 - 12 GB, ~$249
Models that fit the RTX 3050 OEM
- Qwen3.5 4B - 4.7B, 3 GB at Q4
- Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 - 4B, 2 GB at Q4
- Phi-4 Mini - 3B, 2.5 GB at Q4
Compare
Same model, other hardware - and other models on this card
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning on other hardware
- RTX 5090~103 tok/s
- RTX 5090 D~103 tok/s
- RTX 6000D~90 tok/s
- RTX 4090~63 tok/s
- RTX 3090~55 tok/s
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX~55 tok/s
- RTX 5080~55 tok/s
- RTX 3080 Ti~52 tok/s
Also runs on the RTX 3050 OEM
- Qwen3.5 4B~43 tok/s
- Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507~64 tok/s
- Phi-4 Mini~51 tok/s
Frequently asked
Quick answers
Can the GeForce RTX 3050 OEM run Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
No. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning needs about 11.8 GB at Q4_K_M (weights plus 1.8 GB runtime overhead), and the RTX 3050 OEM has 8 GB, so it won't fit without offloading layers to system RAM, which is far slower.
How much VRAM does Nemotron 3.5 Lightning need?
About 10 GB of weights at Q4_K_M, 19 GB at Q8_0 and 36 GB at FP16. Add roughly 1.8 GB for the KV cache and runtime at modest context lengths.
How fast is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning on the RTX 3050 OEM?
It doesn't fit in the RTX 3050 OEM's memory, so speed depends on how many layers you offload to system RAM - typically single-digit tokens per second or lower.