Can I run Gemma 4 26B A4B on an RTX 3060 12GB?
Key facts
No: it needs about 18 GB and this card has 12 GB of graphics memory.
It needs about 18.1 GB at standard quality (estimate). Checked . unsloth UD-Q4_K_M GGUF (not Q4_K_M).
In a PC with enough normal memory it runs slowly: Budget PC with RTX 3060 12GB, about $1,310€1,361 (with a used graphics card).
Updated · Gemma 4 26B A4B on every card
How much memory it needs
That is about 1.6 times what this card has free.
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Get a 1-line alert when a new open-weight model fits 24 GB VRAM (18.1 GB at Q4 for Gemma 4 26B A4B) or when used RTX 3090 / 4090 & Mac Studio prices drop >10% — weekly, zero spam.
What runs Gemma 4 26B A4B instead
The cheapest graphics card on our list that holds the whole model (it still needs the rest of a PC):
GeForce RTX 3090 24GB$1,395€1,246used (median of sold listings)
EU shops · Shown to visitors in Europe.US shops · Shown to visitors outside Europe.
We never pass off an estimate as a benchmark. Commissions never change which hardware we recommend. How we calculate
Price details
$1,395€1,246
How we priced this
Used price, the typical price of second-hand cards that actually sold.
Source: pcprice.watch, checked 24 Oct 2026.
New price, the lowest in stock in the EU: $2,052€2,218 at GPU PRIX, 16 Oct 2026. A Zotac Trinity OC from France.
Used median €1,246 (typical €1,136–€1,334) from 235 cards sold on eBay in the past 90 days, recorded 24 Oct 2026. pcprice.watch refreshed that page on 23 Oct 2026. Not an EU shop price.
Prices excl. shipping unless marked. Euro prices incl. VAT where the seller charges it. Dollar prices are converted from our euro prices without the 21% EU VAT, before US sales tax.
The cheapest complete machine that runs it: Mac mini M6 32GB, about $1,416€1,530.
See our picks for Gemma 4 26B A4B in Find hardware. Add your budget to see cheaper machines.
For comparison, an RTX 3060 12GB costs $292€261, used (median of sold listings). Card details
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Gemma 4 26B A4B on other graphics cards
Runs well6
The whole model fits in the graphics memory.
Doesn't fit4
Not enough graphics memory: it needs about 18.1 GB.
- RTX 3060 12GBhas 12 GB
- RTX 4060 Ti 16GBhas 16 GB
- RTX 5080has 16 GB
- RX 9060 XT 16GBhas 16 GB
More about the model itself, what it is good at and its licence: Gemma 4 26B A4B.
The numbers behind this answer
A model comes in several sizes. Q4 is the standard one most people use; the bigger ones answer a little better but need more memory. Each row adds up the model file, the memory a conversation takes, and some working space, and compares the total with what is free on this card.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Quality | Conversation | Result | Model file | Conversation memory | Working space | Total needed | Free memory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 · standard (smallest that keeps quality) | ~12 pages8,192 tokens | Doesn't fit | 17.0 GBmeasured file | 0.4 GB | 0.8 GB | 18.1 GB | 11.4 GB |
| Q5 · a bit sharper, a bit bigger | ~12 pages8,192 tokens | Doesn't fit | 17.9 GB | 0.4 GB | 0.8 GB | 19.1 GB | 11.4 GB |
| Q8 · near full quality, almost twice Q4 | ~12 pages8,192 tokens | Doesn't fit | 27.0 GB | 0.4 GB | 0.8 GB | 28.1 GB | 11.4 GB |
| FP16 · full quality, over three times Q4 | ~12 pages8,192 tokens | Doesn't fit | 50.4 GB | 0.4 GB | 0.8 GB | 51.6 GB | 11.4 GB |
| Q4 · standard, longer conversation | ~49 pages32,768 tokens | Doesn't fit | 17.0 GBmeasured file | 0.9 GB | 0.8 GB | 18.6 GB | 11.4 GB |
speed: not estimated for MoE yet. This model only uses part of itself for each word (a mixture of experts), and our speed estimate does not handle that yet.
Sources and method
Memory and speed on this page are our estimate, not a measured test. Checked . unsloth UD-Q4_K_M GGUF (not Q4_K_M).
Google's Gemma 4 mixture of experts. The model card's table lists 25.2B total and 3.8B active, with image input, under Apache 2.0. The chat's size class rounds this to 26B with 4B active. 5 of 30 layers attend to the whole context; the other 25 use a 1,024-token window. The vision projector (about 1.19 GB in BF16) is not included in these file sizes.
Measured Gemma 4 26B A4B on an RTX 3060 12GB yourself? Send us your llama-bench result.
Questions
- Can I run Gemma 4 26B A4B on an RTX 3060 12GB?
- No: it needs about 18 GB and this card has 12 GB of graphics memory.
- How much memory does Gemma 4 26B A4B need?
- About 18.1 GB at the standard quality (Q4) for a conversation of up to about 12 pages of text (8,192 tokens), by our estimate: 17.0 GB for the model file (measured), 0.4 GB to hold the conversation and 0.8 GB of working space.
- How fast is Gemma 4 26B A4B on an RTX 3060 12GB?
- We don't give a speed for this model yet. This model only uses part of itself for each word (a mixture of experts), and our speed estimate does not handle that yet.
Speeds and memory are our estimate from the hardware specs, not a measured test. Prices are dated and may change. How we calculate