📍 Part of the Local LLMs in 2026 guide
Gemma 2 27B needs 16 GB VRAM at Q4. The RTX 4090 24GB has 24 GB.
● Gemma 2 27B (Google) is a 27B parameter model used for High-quality chat, reasoning, analysis. Best quality under 24GB at Q4 — punches above its weight.
VRAM Requirements
| Quantization | VRAM Needed | RTX 4090 24GB |
|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M (recommended) | 16 GB | ✅ |
| Q8_0 (high quality) | 28 GB | ❌ |
Expected Performance
Running Gemma 2 27B at Q4 on the RTX 4090 24GB, expect approximately ~24 tokens/sec with Ollama or llama.cpp. That’s fast enough for interactive chat — you’ll see responses streaming in real-time.
Headroom: With 16 GB used out of 24 GB, you have 8 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 4090 24GB
Pros: Fastest consumer GPU, excellent for real-time inference
Cons: Expensive, still only 24GB limits 70B models
Price: ~$1,800 — Check current price on Amazon →