Can Dolphin 2.9 8B run on RTX 2080 Ti 11GB?

YES — Runs Great

B57Good

○Estimated from fit model

Dolphin 2.9 8B needs ~8.8 GB VRAM. RTX 2080 Ti 11GB has 11.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~82 tok/s.

Runtime: llama.cppCapacity: RoomyBandwidth: MediumStack: StandardBottleneck: Balanced

Operating mode

Choose the run profile you care about

Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.

Current mode

Balanced

Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.

Capabilities:

Select quantization to explore

Q4_K_M (Medium quality) — 8.8 GB, 88.2 tok/s, Runs well

8.8 GB required11.0 GB available

80% VRAM used

Fit status

Runs well

Decode

88.2 tok/s

TTFT

2195 ms

Safe context

33K

Memory

8.8 GB / 11.0 GB

Memory breakdown

Weights4.9 GB

KV Cache2.0 GB

Runtime0.9 GB

Headroom1.1 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsDolphin 2.9 8B on RTX 2080 Ti 11GB
1st promptCold start — includes initialization
>What is local AI inference?
Local AI inference means running an AI language model directly on your own hardware — your laptop, desktop, or server — instead of sending requests to a remote cloud API.

When you run inference locally the model weights are loaded into your GPU or unified memory. Each token you generate requires reading those weights from memory, so memory bandwidth is the main bottleneck for decode speed.

Key benefits of running locally:
 - Full privacy: your prompts never leave your machine
 - No per-token cost or rate limits
 - Works offline once the model is downloaded
 - Latency depends only on your hardware
2nd promptWarm — model ready, no init overhead
>How much VRAM do I need?
It depends on the model size and quantization level. A rough rule of thumb:

 Model size Q4 (4-bit) Q8 (8-bit) FP16
 7B params ~4.3 GB ~7.5 GB ~14 GB
 13B params ~7.9 GB ~13.9 GB ~26 GB
 70B params ~42.7 GB ~74.9 GB ~140 GB

Most people use 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M) which gives 90-95% of full quality at a fraction of the memory. A 24 GB GPU can comfortably run most 7B-13B models.
Estimated: 88.2 tok/s decode · 2.2s TTFT (warm) · 221 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.

Older PCIe generation

PCIe 3.0 is workable, but it compounds the penalty when you offload heavily or try to scale across multiple cards.

Best improvement path

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	B	Runs well	88.2 tok/s	1197 ms	33K
Coding	B	Runs well	82.0 tok/s	2360 ms	33K
Agentic Coding	C	Runs with offload	88.2 tok/s	3193 ms	33K
Reasoning	B	Runs well	88.2 tok/s	2594 ms	33K
RAG	C	Runs with offload	88.2 tok/s	3991 ms	33K

Quantization options

How Dolphin 2.9 8B (8B params) fits at each quantization level on RTX 2080 Ti 11GB (11.0 GB usable).

Quant	Bits	VRAM	Quality	Fit
Q2_K	2	3.1 GB	Low	C51
Q3_K_S	3	3.9 GB	Low	C52
NVFP4	4

Get started

Copy-paste commands to run Dolphin 2.9 8B on your machine.

Run

ollama run dolphin-llama3

Upgrade options

Hardware that runs Dolphin 2.9 8B well

👁 NVIDIA
RTX 5070 12GBBudget pick

12 GB VRAM (+1)672 GB/s (+56)

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.93.3 tok/s decode

~$549 MSRP

👁 NVIDIA
RTX 3080 12GBBest value

12 GB VRAM (+1)912 GB/s (+296)

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.96 tok/s decode

~$799 MSRP

👁 NVIDIA
RTX 3080 Ti 12GBNVIDIA upgrade