Old PC vs New AI: Can a 2015 Desktop Run Gemma 4?

Remember that trusty desktop you used to code on back in 2015, with its spinning hard drive and 8GB of RAM? Well, one brave developer decided to see if it could run Google's latest Gemma 4 model. Spoiler: the results are surprisingly not terrible.

The Benchmark: Old Dog, New Tricks

The test pitted two versions of Gemma 4 — 2B and 4B parameters — against a 2015-era PC with a 6th-gen Intel CPU and 16GB RAM, no dedicated GPU. The 2B model chugged along at about 10 tokens per second, which is actually usable for casual chat. The 4B model was slower, managing 3-4 tokens per second, but still readable. By contrast, a modern MacBook Pro with M3 hits 30+ tokens on the same 4B model.

The takeaway? If you've got an old PC gathering dust, it's not completely useless for AI experiments. With a bit of patience (and maybe a RAM upgrade to 32GB), you can run small LLMs locally. It's like driving a vintage car: slow, but you'll get there.

Obviously, this isn't production-ready — you'll want GPUs and fast inference for that. But for tinkering, offline coding assistance, or just proving that your old rig still has some life in it, it's a fun experiment. Just don't expect to win any speed races.

METABYTE studio comment: Running AI on old hardware is a fun challenge, but if you want your neural network to actually keep up with your thoughts, maybe leave it to the pros. We can help you spec a machine that won't make you reminisce about the good old days of single-core CPUs.