Can Qwen3.5 9B run on RTX 3080 Ti 12GB?

YES — Runs Great

B57Good

○Estimated from fit model

Qwen3.5 9B needs ~8.9 GB VRAM. RTX 3080 Ti 12GB has 12.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~123 tok/s.

Runtime: OllamaCapacity: RoomyBandwidth: HighStack: BasicBottleneck: 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) — 8.9 GB, 122.9 tok/s, Runs well

8.9 GB required12.0 GB available

74% VRAM used

Fit status

Runs well

Decode

122.9 tok/s

TTFT

1575 ms

Safe context

62K

Memory

8.9 GB / 12.0 GB

Memory breakdown

Weights5.5 GB

KV Cache1.1 GB

Runtime1.2 GB

Headroom1.2 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsQwen3.5 9B on RTX 3080 Ti 12GB
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: 122.9 tok/s decode · 1.6s TTFT (warm) · 307 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.

No major red flags

This recommendation has enough memory headroom and acceptable estimated speed for the selected workload.

Best improvement path

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	B	Runs well	122.9 tok/s	859 ms	62K
Coding	B	Runs well	122.9 tok/s	1575 ms	62K
Agentic Coding	C	Tight fit	122.9 tok/s	2291 ms	62K
Reasoning	B	Runs well	122.9 tok/s	1861 ms	62K
RAG	C	Tight fit	122.9 tok/s	2863 ms	62K

Quantization options

How Qwen3.5 9B (9B params) fits at each quantization level on RTX 3080 Ti 12GB (12.0 GB usable).

Quant	Bits	VRAM	Quality	Fit
Q2_K	2	3.5 GB	Low	C50
Q3_K_S	3	4.4 GB	Low	C52
NVFP4	4	5.0 GB	Medium	C52
Q4_K_M	4	5.5 GB	Medium	C53
Q5_K_M	5	6.5 GB	High	C53
Q6_KBest for your GPU	6	7.4 GB	High	C52
Q8_0	8	9.6 GB	Very High	F0
F16	16	18.5 GB	Maximum	F0

Get started

Copy-paste commands to run Qwen3.5 9B on your machine.

Run

docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
 --hf-repo "unsloth/Qwen3.5-9B-GGUF" \
 --hf-file "Qwen3.5-9B-GGUF-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
 -c 4096 -ngl 99

Frequently asked questions

See all results for RTX 3080 Ti 12GB See all hardware for Qwen3.5 9B

URL: https://willitrunai.com/can-run/hf-unsloth--qwen3-5-9b-gguf-on-rtx-3080-ti-12gb