The best GPU for running Gemma 4 12B (2026)
Ranked from live rental prices and computed VRAM fit, not opinion. Every card is judged at Q4_K_M — the quantisation most people actually run — at 8k context, so it's a fair comparison. A card that can't fit Gemma 4 12Bat that quality isn't listed, because it could only run a crushed version.
Best value
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
Best throughput per dollar among cards that fit.
Cheapest that runs it
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
Lowest hourly rental that fits it — $0.042/hr, Q4_K_M.
No compromise
—
Most headroom and highest throughput.
Every card that runs it, ranked
Best quantisation each card fits at 8k context, with the cheapest live rental and a bandwidth-derived throughput estimate. Sorted by tokens/sec per dollar.
| GPU | VRAM | VRAM used | ~tok/s | Cheapest rental | tok/s per $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition | 96 GB | 8 GB8% | — | $1.690 | — |
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition | 96 GB | 8 GB8% | — | — | — |
| NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation | 48 GB | 8 GB16% | — | $0.494 | — |
| AMD Radeon PRO W7900 | 48 GB | 8 GB16% | — | — | — |
| NVIDIA RTX A6000 | 48 GB | 8 GB16% | — | $0.330 | — |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 | 32 GB | 8 GB24% | — | $0.362 | — |
| NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation | 32 GB | 8 GB24% | — | $0.429 | — |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 | 24 GB | 8 GB32% | — | $0.136 | — |
| AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX | 24 GB | 8 GB32% | — | — | — |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti | 24 GB | 8 GB32% | — | $0.121 | — |
| NVIDIA RTX A5000 | 24 GB | 8 GB32% | — | $0.160 | — |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 | 24 GB | 8 GB32% | — | — | — |
How this ranking is made — and its limit
Fit and throughput are computed from Gemma 4 12B's own configuration with the engine behind our cost-to-run page (bits-per-weight validated to 0.7% median error). Rental prices are the cheapest live figure across the providers we track, last updated Thu, 24 Sep 2026 21:20:58 GMT.
The value column ranks renting, because that's what we can price precisely. If you're buyinga card, the fit and throughput columns are exactly what you need — but we don't publish a purchase-price value ranking, because we don't have verified street prices and won't invent them. For the buy-vs-rent decision itself, see the guides below.
Tokens/sec is a bandwidth-derived estimate, not a benchmark — we don't run our own hardware tests (editorial policy).
Check it yourself
See exactly what fits, at any context length
Running Gemma 4 12B: common questions
How much VRAM do you need to run Gemma 4 12B?
Can an RTX 4090 run Gemma 4 12B?
Can an RTX 3090 run Gemma 4 12B?
Can an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB run Gemma 4 12B?
What's the cheapest way to run Gemma 4 12B?
Before you buy
GLM-4.5-Air on local hardware
The consumer-runnable GLM: VRAM by quant, which cards and unified-memory boxes clear it, and what to expect from published numbers — the written companion to this page.
Cheapest way to run GLM in the cloud
Air on one 80 GB card, GLM-4.6 on two, GLM-5 on a pair of H200s — the multi-GPU maths with live, dated rental prices.
Run Mistral Small 24B locally
VRAM by quant (Q4 ~14 GB, Q8 ~25 GB, BF16 ~55 GB), which cards clear it, what tokens/s to expect from published benchmarks — and what a 24 GB card rents for when yours doesn't.
Cheapest RTX 4090 rental
Live per-hour 4090 prices on Vast and Runpod, the spot-vs-on-demand lever, and what a 24 GB card actually runs — the rent-a-card answer for everything in the 14B–32B class.