What hardware runs Gemma 3 27B?

Gemma 3 27B is a 27.01B-parameter dense model (gemma license). Sliding-window attention keeps long context cheap, and the vision stack still beats most of 2026's newcomers.

All figures assume an f16 KV cache, a 0.6 GB display reserve on the GPU, and 64 GB of DDR5 system RAM for the offload tiers. Tune these in the calculator.

Minimum VRAM by quant and context

Full-GPU figures: weights + f16 KV cache + overhead. * below our recommended floor of Q4_K_M.

GPU compatibility

Fits on GPUExpert offloadPartial offloadCPU only

Quant guidance

Our floor for Gemma 3 27B is Q4_K_M — below that, quality degrades faster than the VRAM savings are worth. Prefer the highest quant that still lands "Fits on GPU" at your context length in the table above.

Recommended run command

Q4_K_M at 32K on a AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT-class GPU (Partial offload):

llama-server -m gemma-3-27b-it-Q4_K_M.gguf -c 32768 --flash-attn -ngl 59