Qwen 3 8B needs ~9.4 GB VRAM. RTX 2080 Ti 11GB has 11.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~88 tok/s.
Operating mode
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.
Select quantization to explore
Fit status
Tight fit
Decode
88.2 tok/s
TTFT
2195 ms
Safe context
28K
Memory
9.4 GB / 11.0 GB
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.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | S | Runs well | 88.2 tok/s | 1197 ms | 28K |
| Coding | S | Tight fit | 88.2 tok/s | 2195 ms | 28K |
| Agentic Coding | S | Runs with offload (needs ~0.2 GB host RAM) | 57.5 tok/s | 4895 ms | 28K |
| Reasoning | S | Tight fit | 88.2 tok/s | 2594 ms | 28K |
| RAG | S | Runs with offload (needs ~0.2 GB host RAM) | 57.5 tok/s | 6118 ms |
How Qwen 3 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 | S90 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 3.9 GB | Low | S91 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run Qwen 3 8B on your machine.
Run
ollama run qwen3:8bYour hardware
| Model | Params | Grade | Decode | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9B | S | 78.4 tok/s |
Yes, RTX 2080 Ti 11GB can run Qwen 3 8B with a S grade (Tight fit). Expected decode speed: 88.2 tok/s.
Qwen 3 8B (8B parameters) requires approximately 9.4 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Qwen 3 8B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On RTX 2080 Ti 11GB, Qwen 3 8B achieves approximately 88.2 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 2195ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Qwen 3 8B on RTX 2080 Ti 11GB receives a S grade with 88.2 tok/s and 28K context.
On RTX 2080 Ti 11GB, Qwen 3 8B can safely use up to 28K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 131K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/qwen-3-8b-on-rtx-2080-ti-11gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
| 28K |
4.5 GB |
| Medium |
| S92 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 4.9 GB | Medium | S93 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 5.8 GB | High | S92 |
Q6_KBest for your GPU | 6 | 6.6 GB | High | S92 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 8.6 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 16.4 GB | Maximum | F0 |