Gemma 4 12B · 54 GPUs measured first-party · llama.cpp Q4_K_M · Updated October 2026

What GPU Do You Need for Gemma 4 12B?

Gemma 4 12B is the newest Gemma generation in our database, Google's refreshed recipe at the practical mid size. Measured on 54 GPUs (llama.cpp, Q4_K_M): 156 tok/s on the B300, ~9GB peak VRAM, and one standout row: 151 tok/s on the H200 at under 100W.

Benchmarked weights: bartowski/google_gemma-4-12b-it-GGUF

Fastest we measured

NVIDIA B300

156.0 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B, the ceiling. Measured on our bench. 288GB of VRAM, $40,000 at launch.

Pros

• 156.0 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B
• 288GB, clears the Gemma 4 12B floor
• Rentable by the hour rather than bought

Cons

• 1400W board rating
• Datacenter or workstation hardware, not a retail purchase

Best consumer card

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

151.5 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B, fastest card you can buy at retail. Measured on our bench. 32GB of VRAM, $1,999 at launch.

Pros

• 151.5 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B
• 32GB, clears the Gemma 4 12B floor

Cons

• 575W board rating

Cheapest card that runs it

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060

47.75 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B, lowest launch price that still fits. Measured on our bench. 8GB of VRAM, $249 at launch.

Pros

• 47.75 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B
• 8GB, clears the Gemma 4 12B floor

Cons

• 145W board rating

Best value

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

52.67 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B, most speed per dollar. Measured on our bench. 8GB of VRAM, $399 at launch. That is 132.0 tok/s per $1,000 of launch price.

Pros

• 52.67 tok/s on Gemma 4 12B
• 8GB, clears the Gemma 4 12B floor

Cons

• 200W board rating

New generation, familiar profile. Our Gemma family verdict, capable everywhere, specialized nowhere, carries into generation 4 on the evidence so far. Speed and floor land almost exactly on Gemma 3 12B (156 vs 161 tok/s, both ~9GB), so the upgrade case is the newer training, not the hardware math. Same slot, same rivals: it's the do-everything option for a 12GB card, competing against Qwen3 14B's ecosystem, Phi-4 14B's speed, and DeepSeek 14B's reasoning without out-benchmarking any of them.

The efficiency headline. One number in this run deserves its own sentence: the H200 delivered 151 tok/s at 99.6W measured, 1.52 tok/W, the best efficiency we've recorded for any 12B-class model. If you're serving a mid-size model sustained and paying for power, that row is the reason to shortlist this model. At the affordable end, the A10G's 56 tok/s and L4's 31 tok/s keep it interactive on modest silicon.

How it compares. H100 80GB HBM3: Gemma 4 12B 148.2 tok/s, Gemma 3 12B 150.6, Qwen3 14B 151.2 (15B), EVA-Qwen2.5-14B-v0.2 145.2, Qwen2.5-Coder-14B-Instruct-abliterated 145.0. 2 of 4 beat Gemma 4 12B here.

Cost on a rented GPU. 1M generated tokens of Gemma 4 12B: $0.24 on a RTX 3060 ($0.036/hr, 6.8 hours), $12.36 on a B300 ($6.94/hr, 107 min, 50.7x the cost).

Speed tiers for Gemma 4 12B. 30+ tok/s: 51 (RTX 5090, RTX 4090, RTX 3090 Ti); 10-30 tok/s: 3 (GTX 1080). 30 tok/s is roughly where replies outpace reading.

Reading your prompt. Before Gemma 4 12B writes anything it reads the input: 8627.7 tok/s on the RTX 5090 (0.5s for a 4,000-token prompt), 6913.3 on the RTX 4090 (0.6s), 458.0 on the GTX 1080 (8.7s). Long documents and big code files feel this number more than the generation speed.

VRAM for Gemma 4 12B. Measured peak 7.4GB, so 8GB is the smallest common card size; smallest card it ran on: RTX 3070 Ti (8GB). With long context: Q4_K_M 9GB (tested), Q3_K_M 8GB, Q5_K_M 11GB, Q6_K 13GB, Q8_0 17GB.

Power on Gemma 4 12B. Most efficient: RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, 201W, 0.40 kWh per 1M generated tokens. Hungriest: B200, 336W, 0.64 kWh. At $0.15/kWh: $0.061 per 1M generated tokens.

Our verdict

Gemma 4 12B: 156 tok/s peak, ~9GB floor, and the best 12B-class efficiency we've measured (1.52 tok/W on the H200). The newest Gemma keeps the family character, a polished generalist at the mid size, with a power bill argument the rest of its class can't match.

FAQ

What's new versus Gemma 3 12B?

The training recipe. Hardware behavior is nearly identical in our runs (156 vs 161 tok/s peak, ~9GB floors). Choose by output quality on your tasks; the deployment math is a wash.

What GPU does Gemma 4 12B need?

A 12GB card with room to spare (~9GB measured peak at Q4_K_M). The $179 Arc B580 hosts it; anything bigger is comfort.

Why highlight the H200 number?

151 tok/s at 99.6W, 1.52 tok/W, is the most efficient 12B-class result in our database. For sustained serving, that's a materially smaller power bill than every rival at this size.

How does it stack against the 14B competition?

Within striking distance on speed (156 vs 165-177 tok/s peaks) with a lighter floor. Like the rest of the Gemma line it doesn't lead a category. Its case is balance, multilingual polish and that efficiency figure.

Should Gemma 3 12B owners switch?

If your prompts show quality gains, yes, the hardware cost of switching is zero (same floor, same speed class). Test both; keep the one your outputs prefer.