📍 Part of the Local LLMs in 2026 guide
Qwen 2.5 14B needs 8.5 GB VRAM at Q4. The RTX 3090 24GB has 24 GB.
● Qwen 2.5 14B (Alibaba) is a 14B parameter model used for Code, math, multilingual reasoning. Excellent for technical tasks, strong at code generation.
VRAM Requirements
| Quantization | VRAM Needed | RTX 3090 24GB |
|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M (recommended) | 8.5 GB | ✅ |
| Q8_0 (high quality) | 14.5 GB | ✅ |
Expected Performance
Running Qwen 2.5 14B at Q4 on the RTX 3090 24GB, expect approximately ~38 tokens/sec with Ollama or llama.cpp. That’s fast enough for interactive chat — you’ll see responses streaming in real-time.
Headroom: With 8.5 GB used out of 24 GB, you have 15.5 GB free for KV cache (context window). At 4K context, this is plenty. At 32K+ context you may need to reduce batch size.
About the RTX 3090 24GB
Pros: 24GB sweet spot for 27-34B models, great used value
Cons: Power hungry (350W), loud, large card
Price: ~$800 used — Check current price on Amazon →