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October 7, 2026No. 158
Home / Will it run? / Gemma 4 26B-A4B IT / GeForce RTX 5090
GeForce RTX 5090 · 32GB GDDR7

Can the GeForce RTX 5090 run Gemma 4 26B-A4B IT?

Fits comfortably at Q4_K_M.

Gemma 4 26B-A4B IT is 25.8B parameters (MoE; all experts resident). At Q4_K_M the weights are about 14.4 GiB; with the 1.5 GiB runtime reserve that is 15.9 GiB against the card's 32GB, leaving about 16.1 GiB for context.

All three quants

32GB card
QuantWeightsWith reserveVerdictHeadroom
Q4_K_Mthe everyday quant14.4 GiB15.9 GiBFits comfortably16.1 GiB
Q8_0near-lossless25.5 GiB27.0 GiBFits comfortably5.0 GiB
FP16full weights48.1 GiB49.6 GiBOnly with CPU offloadshort 17.6 GiB

Verdict rules: fits comfortably when weights plus reserve sit within 85% of VRAM; tight when they fit with little left for context; CPU offload when they exceed VRAM by up to 2x (runs, slowly, with layers in system RAM); no beyond that. The KV cache per token depends on the model's architecture and is not modelled here.

The numbers for this pairing

At Q4_K_M the weights take about 14.4 GiB; with the 1.5 GiB we set aside for the runtime that is 15.9 of the card's 32 GB, leaving about 16.1 GB for the context cache.

The highest-quality version that fits entirely in memory is Q8_0.

It is a mixture-of-experts model: about 3.8B of its 25.8B parameters work on each token, which helps speed, but all of them still have to fit in memory.

The cheapest card on our list that runs it comfortably at Q4 is the Radeon RX 7900 XTX at about $850, against about $6,500 for this card.

At about $6,500, this card costs roughly $203 per GB of VRAM.

Running it at its full 575 W board power for 4 hours a day would use about 69 kWh a month, about $12.70 at the US average residential rate of 18.4 cents per kWh (2026-05); real use sits below that ceiling.

Prices are the lowest current listings our tracker saw on Oct 7, 2026, since averages include premium variants; launch prices are marked where we have no listing.

Good match. Get the card.

The GeForce RTX 5090 clears Gemma 4 26B-A4B IT at Q4_K_M and at Q8_0. Live listings below; this page was rebuilt 2026-10-07.

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About the model

Gemma 4 26B-A4B IT by Google: 262,144-token native context, text + vision, released 2026 under the Apache-2.0. Model card → · Hosted pricing on PicksByModel →

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