Can the RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X run Qwen3.8 27B?
No. Qwen3.8 27B needs about 17.8 GB at Q4_K_M (weights plus 1.8 GB runtime overhead), and the RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X has 8 GB, so it won't fit without offloading layers to system RAM, which is far slower.
Every quantization
Qwen3.8 27B (27.8B) on 8 GB
| Quant | Weights | Needs | Fit | Est. speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 16 GB | 17.8 GB | Too big | - |
| Q5_K_M | 20 GB | 21.8 GB | Too big | - |
| Q8_0 | 30 GB | 31.8 GB | Too big | - |
| FP16 | 56 GB | 57.8 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 3060 Ti GDDR6X's 608.3 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
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT - 20 GB, ~$699
- NVIDIA RTX 3090 - 24 GB, ~$750
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX - 24 GB, ~$849
Models that fit the RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X
- Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 - 7.2B, 4 GB at Q4
- Qwen3.5 4B - 4.7B, 3 GB at Q4
- Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 - 4B, 2 GB at Q4
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 4B - 4B, 2 GB at Q4
Compare
Same model, other hardware - and other models on this card
Qwen3.8 27B on other hardware
- RTX 5090~64 tok/s
- RTX 5090 D~64 tok/s
- RTX 6000D~56 tok/s
- RTX 4090~39 tok/s
- RTX 3090~34 tok/s
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX~34 tok/s
- MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max~20 tok/s
- Arc Pro B60~16 tok/s
Also runs on the RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X
- Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2~87 tok/s
- Qwen3.5 4B~116 tok/s
- Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507~174 tok/s
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 4B~174 tok/s
- Phi-4 Mini~140 tok/s
Frequently asked
Quick answers
Can the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X run Qwen3.8 27B?
No. Qwen3.8 27B needs about 17.8 GB at Q4_K_M (weights plus 1.8 GB runtime overhead), and the RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X has 8 GB, so it won't fit without offloading layers to system RAM, which is far slower.
How much VRAM does Qwen3.8 27B need?
About 16 GB of weights at Q4_K_M, 30 GB at Q8_0 and 56 GB at FP16. Add roughly 1.8 GB for the KV cache and runtime at modest context lengths.
How fast is Qwen3.8 27B on the RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X?
It doesn't fit in the RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X's memory, so speed depends on how many layers you offload to system RAM - typically single-digit tokens per second or lower.