Nemotron 3 Nano 4B · 36 GPUs measured first-party · llama.cpp Q4_K_M · Updated October 2026

What GPU Do You Need for Nemotron 3 Nano 4B?

We ran Nemotron 3 Nano 4B (Q4_K_M, llama.cpp) on 36 GPUs, from budget cards to datacenter parts, and measured generation speed, prompt processing, power draw and peak VRAM on every one. The fastest was NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 at 410.9 tok/s.

Benchmarked weights: lmstudio-community/NVIDIA-Nemotron-3-Nano-4B-GGUF

Fastest we measured

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

410.9 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B, the ceiling. Measured on our bench. 32GB of VRAM, $1,999 at launch.

Pros

• 410.9 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B
• 32GB, clears the Nemotron 3 Nano 4B floor

Cons

• 575W board rating

Best consumer card

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

258.1 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B, fastest card you can buy at retail. Measured on our bench. 24GB of VRAM, $1,599 at launch.

Pros

• 258.1 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B
• 24GB, clears the Nemotron 3 Nano 4B floor

Cons

• 450W board rating

Cheapest card that runs it

GeForce RTX 4060

82.74 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B, lowest launch price that still fits. Measured on our bench. 8GB of VRAM, $299 at launch.

Pros

• 82.74 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B
• 8GB, clears the Nemotron 3 Nano 4B floor

Cons

• 115W board rating

Best value

GeForce RTX 5070

185.0 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B, most speed per dollar. Measured on our bench. 12GB of VRAM, $549 at launch. That is 337.0 tok/s per $1,000 of launch price.

Pros

• 185.0 tok/s on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B
• 12GB, clears the Nemotron 3 Nano 4B floor

Cons

• 250W board rating

What the numbers show. Across 36 GPUs measured on our own bench, RTX 5090 is fastest at 411 tok/s. H100 80GB HBM3 is the most efficient, 382 tok/s at 180W (2.125 tok/W). Per dollar of launch price, RTX 5060 Ti gives the most (389.1 tok/s per $1,000). The fastest card with 16GB or less is RTX 5080 at 255 tok/s. The measured peak was ~3GB, so it runs on 6GB cards and up. That floor is a property of the model, so it applies to every GPU, measured or not.

About Nemotron 3 Nano 4B. Nemotron 3 Nano 4B: from nvidia, 4.0B parameters, on Hugging Face since March 2026. 2,274,852 downloads in the last 30 days.

How it compares. H100 80GB HBM3: Nemotron 3 Nano 4B 381.9 tok/s, Qwen3-4B 310.3 (4B), Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 311.5 (4B), Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507 310.8 (4B), Granite 4.1 3B 332.3 (3B). Nemotron 3 Nano 4B beats all 4 here.

Cost on a rented GPU. 1M generated tokens of Nemotron 3 Nano 4B: $0.100 on a RTX 3060 ($0.036/hr, 2.8 hours), $0.26 on a RTX 5090 ($0.39/hr, 41 min, 2.6x the cost).

Speed tiers for Nemotron 3 Nano 4B. 30+ tok/s: 36 (RTX 5090, RTX 4090, RTX 5080). 30 tok/s is roughly where replies outpace reading.

Reading your prompt. Before Nemotron 3 Nano 4B writes anything it reads the input: 22502.0 tok/s on the RTX 5090 (0.2s for a 4,000-token prompt), 15447.0 on the RTX 4090 (0.3s), 1951.2 on the T4 (2.1s). Long documents and big code files feel this number more than the generation speed.

VRAM for Nemotron 3 Nano 4B. Measured peak 2.8GB, so 8GB is the smallest common card size; smallest card it ran on: RTX 3070 Ti (8GB). With long context: Q4_K_M 4GB (tested), Q6_K 6GB, Q8_0 6GB.

Power on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B. Most efficient: H100 80GB HBM3, 180W, 0.13 kWh per 1M generated tokens. Hungriest: RTX 3090 Ti, 255W, 0.29 kWh. At $0.15/kWh: $0.020 per 1M generated tokens.

Our verdict

Fastest on Nemotron 3 Nano 4B: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, 410.9 tok/s. Cheapest consumer card that ran it: GeForce RTX 4060 ($299, 82.74 tok/s). Cheapest to rent per job: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, $0.100 per 1M generated tokens.

FAQ

What GPU do I need to run Nemotron 3 Nano 4B?

About 3GB. Cheapest consumer card that ran it: GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB, 82.74 tok/s).

How fast is Nemotron 3 Nano 4B on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090?

410.9 tok/s at 219W, faster than every datacenter card we ran it on.

How much does it cost to run Nemotron 3 Nano 4B in the cloud?

$0.100 per 1M generated tokens on a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 at $0.036/hr, cheapest of 31 rentable cards we measured.

Can I run Nemotron 3 Nano 4B on a 12GB, 16GB or 24GB card?

It used 2.8GB at the precision we tested. 12GB: yes; 16GB: yes; 24GB: yes.

Is the RTX 4090 or the RTX 3090 faster for Nemotron 3 Nano 4B?

The RTX 4090: 258.1 vs 222.4 tok/s, 16% faster on our bench.

Should I buy or rent a RTX 5090 for Nemotron 3 Nano 4B?

Its $1,999 launch price buys 5,139 rented hours at $0.39/hr, enough for about 7,602x 1M generated tokens of Nemotron 3 Nano 4B. Buy only if you'll run more than that.

How we test

llama.cpp llama-bench at Q4_K_M, 512-token prompt and 128 generated tokens, three runs after a warmup, full GPU offload, with power and VRAM sampled throughout. Token generation is memory-bandwidth-bound, so the ranking tracks bandwidth closely, which makes it a fair guide to cards we haven't run yet.