are there memory limit settings that can be changed?

Ollama offers several memory management settings, including the ability to reduce context length (context window) to decrease VRAM usage, which can save 0.2-0.4GB for 7-8B models when reduced from 8K to 4K tokens. Additional configurable options include KV cache quantization via the OLLAMA_KV_CACHE_TYPE environment variable (such as q8_0 or q4_0), which can halve or quarter memory usage while increasing maximum possible context length. Users can also configure the --keepalive parameter to control how long a model stays loaded in memory after use.

Source: r/ollama | 2026-05-14