RTX 3080: 12 GB, what it runs and what it costs
Specs checked · Aliteq Team · How we compute this
The short answer
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12GB has 12 GB of VRAM and 912 GB/s of memory bandwidth (2022). At Q4_K_M quality or better with an 8K context it runs 14 of the open models we track; the largest that fits with room to spare is Gemma 3 12B. We don't see it for rent on the providers we track right now.
- VRAM
- 12 GB
- Bandwidth
- 912 GB/s
- Board power
- 350 W
- Launched
- 2022
Source: NVIDIA specification · bandwidth not yet confirmed by a second source, so we don't estimate speed from it
Buy it or rent it
Not for rent on the providers we track right now. See every card that is.
Which AI models run on the RTX 3080
Computed by our VRAM engine for an 8K context: the best quality each model fits at in 12 GB. Speeds are upper-bound estimates from memory bandwidth, not benchmarks.
| Model | Best fit | VRAM used | ~tok/s |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B | Q5_0 | 12 GB98% · tight | — |
| Qwen2.5-Coder 14B | Q5_0 | 12 GB98% · tight | — |
| Qwen3 14B | Q5_K_M | 12 GB98% · tight | — |
| Phi-4 14B | Q5_0 | 12 GB98% · tight | — |
| Gemma 3 12B | Q6_K | 11 GB88% | — |
| Gemma 4 12B | Q6_K | 10 GB84% | — |
| Qwen3.5 9B | Q8_0 | 11 GB88% | — |
| Qwen3 8B | Q8_0 | 10 GB83% | — |
| Gemma 4 E4B | Q8_0 | 9 GB73% | — |
| Qwen2.5 7B Instruct | Q8_0 | 9 GB73% | — |
| Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3 | Q8_0 | 9 GB75% | — |
| Gemma 4 E2B | F16 | 10 GB86% | — |
Fits only below Q4 quality: Qwen3.5 27B (IQ3_XS), Qwen3.6 27B (IQ3_XS), Qwen3.8 27B (IQ3_XS), Gemma 4 26B-A4B (MoE) (Q2_K), Mistral Small 24B (Q2_K).
Too big for 12 GB (rent a bigger card instead): what it costs to run Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE), what it costs to run Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B (MoE), what it costs to run Gemma 4 31B, what it costs to run NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B (MoE).
Check a model and context of your own in the VRAM calculator.
AI video on the RTX 3080
Alibaba's Wan 2.2 is an open video model you can run yourself in ComfyUI. With 12 GB the RTX 3080 fits:
- Wan 2.2 5B, with ComfyUI's native offloading (8 GB and up, per ComfyUI's Wan 2.2 docs)
What each setup needs, the cheapest card to rent and what one clip costs: cloud GPUs for ComfyUI with Flux and Wan 2.2. Against an app or an API: AI video cost per clip, app vs API vs rented GPU. Rather not run a model yourself? Hosted video models such as Seedance, Veo and Hailuo are compared in Kling AI alternatives, priced per clip.
Our guides on the RTX 3080
Cards to compare it with
- RTX 3080 Ti · 12 GB
- RTX 5070 · 12 GB
- RTX 4070 Ti · 12 GB
- RTX 4070 SUPER · 12 GB
- RTX 4070 · 12 GB
- RTX 3060 · 12 GB
Every card by VRAM tier: all GPUs for gaming and local AI.