What can the GTX 1080 Ti run?
With 11 GB, 4 of 12 popular open models fit. The best pick is Qwen3 14B at about 29 tok/s, about reading speed.
ollama run qwen3:14bFirst time? Install Ollama, then paste that into a terminal. Is this your machine? Check it on the homepage.
Every model the GTX 1080 Ti can run
- Qwen3 4BQuick everyday chat and summaries~110 tok/sRuns great
qwen3:4b - Qwen3 8BA solid all-rounder for chat and writing~51 tok/sRuns great
qwen3:8b - Gemma 3 12BReads images as well as text~33 tok/sRuns great
gemma3:12b - Qwen3 14BNoticeably smarter at reasoning and code~29 tok/sUsable
qwen3:14b - gpt-oss 20BOpenAI's open model. Fast, strong reasoningneeds 16 GBToo big
gpt-oss:20b - Gemma 3 27BGoogle's best open model for its sizeneeds 19 GBToo big
gemma3:27b - Qwen3 30B-A3B30B smarts at small-model speedneeds 21 GBToo big
qwen3:30b - Qwen3 32BStrong coding and long answersneeds 22 GBToo big
qwen3:32b - Llama 3.3 70BClose to the big cloud modelsneeds 45 GBToo big
llama3.3:70b - gpt-oss 120BOpenAI's largest open modelneeds 67 GBToo big
gpt-oss:120b - Qwen3 235B-A22BAlibaba's flagship open model, for multi-GPU rigsneeds 144 GBToo big
qwen3:235b - DeepSeek R1 671BThe full DeepSeek R1, for the biggest rigsneeds 406 GBToo big
deepseek-r1:671b
Can the GTX 1080 Ti run it?
Can the GTX 1080 Ti run Gemma 3 12B?
Yes. Gemma 3 12B needs about 10 GB and the GTX 1080 Ti has 11 GB of VRAM. Expect about 33 tok/s, faster than you can read.
Can the GTX 1080 Ti run Qwen3 14B?
Yes. Qwen3 14B needs about 11 GB and the GTX 1080 Ti has 11 GB of VRAM. Expect about 29 tok/s, about reading speed.
Can the GTX 1080 Ti run gpt-oss 20B?
No. gpt-oss 20B needs about 16 GB and the GTX 1080 Ti has at most 11 GB of VRAM. Ollama can still start it by putting part of the model in system RAM, but it runs several times slower. The most capable model it runs well is Qwen3 14B, at about 29 tok/s.
Real runs on the GTX 1080 Ti
Loading measured runs…
Generating a token reads the model's active weights from memory once, so speed is roughly memory bandwidth (484 GB/s) divided by the active weight size, with efficiency calibrated on our own rack. Sizes are Ollama's default 4-bit downloads plus about 1.2 GB for context. Real results are usually within about a third. Measured runs are on the leaderboard.
The Used workstation + 2× Tesla P100 runs Qwen3 32B at about 20 tok/s, from $750 used.