24 GB · 936 GB/s
What can the NVIDIA RTX 3090 (used) run?
The best value for 24 GB. Six years old, still the community favourite.
Best models for each task
Our top three for this machine. Chat and image tasks assume an 8K-token conversation; coding, documents and agents assume 32K.
Chat & writing18 of 25 run
- Qwen3.8 27BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 19.9 GB at 8K · 30–50tok/sFast
- Gemma 4 31BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 21.4 GB at 8K · 30–45tok/sSmooth
- Muse Glimmer 30BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 19.8 GB at 8K · 30–50tok/sFast
Coding20 of 26 run
- Qwen3.8 27BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 21.5 GB at 32K · 30–45tok/sSmooth
- Muse Glimmer 30BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 20.2 GB at 32K · 30–50tok/sFast
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3BRuns wellUD-IQ4_XS · needs 20.3 GB at 32K · 100–200tok/sFast
Long documents13 of 20 run
- Qwen3.8 27BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 21.5 GB at 32K · 30–45tok/sSmooth
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3BRuns wellUD-IQ4_XS · needs 20.3 GB at 32K · 100–200tok/sFast
- Gemma 4 12BRuns greatQ8_0 · needs 14.7 GB at 32K · 40–65tok/sFast
Agents & tools20 of 26 run
- Qwen3.8 27BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 21.5 GB at 32K · 30–45tok/sSmooth
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3BRuns wellUD-IQ4_XS · needs 20.3 GB at 32K · 100–200tok/sFast
- Muse Glimmer 30BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 20.2 GB at 32K · 30–50tok/sFast
Images in9 of 13 run
- Qwen3.8 27BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 19.9 GB at 8K · 30–50tok/sFast
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3BRuns wellUD-IQ4_XS · needs 19.8 GB at 8K · 120–230tok/sFast
- Muse Glimmer 30BRuns wellQ4_K_M · needs 19.8 GB at 8K · 30–50tok/sFast
Make images6 of 6 run
- Stable Diffusion XL Base 1.0Runs greatFP16 · needs 7.9 GB
- FLUX.2 [klein] 4BRuns greatBF16 · needs 14.0 GB
- Z-Image-TurboRuns greatBF16 · needs 17.0 GB
Speak text7 of 7 run
- Qwen3-TTS 1.7BRuns greatBF16 · needs 5.5 GB
- Kokoro-82MRuns greatFP32 · needs 1.4 GB
- Chatterbox Multilingual V3Runs greatFull · needs 4.2 GB
Transcribe7 of 7 run
- Voxtral Mini 4B RealtimeRuns greatBF16 · needs 17.0 GB
- Whisper large-v3-turbo (via faster-whisper)Runs greatFP16 · needs 2.6 GB
- Nemotron 3.5 ASR Streaming 0.6BRuns greatFP32 · needs 3.5 GB
Biggest model it runs well
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B (UD-IQ4_XS, 17.7 GB file) at about 120–230tok/sFast.
Should you buy it?
Buy it if
You want 24 GB for the least money and can test a used card.
Skip it if
You want a warranty, or a quiet machine.
Watch out for
- Memory runs hot on older cards; new thermal pads may be needed.
- Check it is the 24 GB card and test it on arrival.
Measured on this hardware
Real runs from public sources, not estimates. All measurements.