What can an RTX 3060 12GB run?
The RTX 3060 12GB has 12 GB of VRAM. The table below checks every language model in our calculator at three quantizations with an 8K-token context, using the same file sizes and fit rule as the rest of the site.
Best model for the RTX 3060 12GB: Qwen2.5 14B Instruct. It is the largest model in our calculator (14.8B parameters) that fits comfortably at 4-bit: Q4_K_M plus an 8K-token FP16 KV cache needs 10.6 GB, under 90% of 12 GB. The highest precision it fits comfortably at is 4-bit (Q4_K_M). In total, 10 of the 30 language models we track fit comfortably at 4-bit on this card.
| Model | 4-bit (Q4_K_M) | 8-bit (Q8_0) | 16-bit (FP16/BF16) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen2.5 14B InstructAlibaba Qwen | 10.6 GB · Fits | 17.3 GB · Too big | 31.2 GB · Too big |
| Qwen3 14BAlibaba Qwen | 10.3 GB · Fits | 17.0 GB · Too big | 30.9 GB · Too big |
| DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8BDeepSeek | 6.2 GB · Fits | 9.9 GB · Fits | 17.6 GB · Too big |
| Llama 3.1 8B InstructMeta | 6.0 GB · Fits | 9.6 GB · Fits | 17.1 GB · Too big |
| Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B*NVIDIA | 6.2 GB · Fits | 8.2 GB · Fits | 15.1 GB · Too big |
| Qwen2.5 7B InstructAlibaba Qwen | 5.2 GB · Fits | 8.6 GB · Fits | 15.7 GB · Too big |
| Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3Mistral AI | 5.4 GB · Fits | 8.8 GB · Fits | 15.6 GB · Too big |
| Spark-X2.6 4BXHToken | 3.8 GB · Fits | 4.7 GB · Fits | 8.5 GB · Fits |
| Llama 3.2 3B InstructMeta | 3.0 GB · Fits | 4.4 GB · Fits | 7.4 GB · Fits |
| LFM3 1.7BLiquid AI | 1.2 GB · Fits | 1.9 GB · Fits | 3.6 GB · Fits |
| gpt-oss-20bOpenAI | 11.9 GB · Tight | 12.3 GB · Too big | 14.0 GB · Too big |
| Kimi K3Moonshot AI | 1,508.9 GB · Too big | 1,561.4 GB · Too big | n/a |
| Mistral Large 4 (Le Chonk)Mistral AI | 635.5 GB · Too big | 1,115.8 GB · Too big | 2,099.5 GB · Too big |
| DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017DeepSeek | 500.7 GB · Too big | 508.4 GB · Too big | n/a |
| Qwen3.8 Flash NextAlibaba Qwen | 119.8 GB · Too big | 188.5 GB · Too big | 354.2 GB · Too big |
| Ornith-1.5-122BOrnith | 79.9 GB · Too big | 132.8 GB · Too big | 249.6 GB · Too big |
| gpt-oss-120bOpenAI | 63.1 GB · Too big | 63.7 GB · Too big | 65.7 GB · Too big |
| Llama 3.1 70B InstructMeta | 45.2 GB · Too big | 77.7 GB · Too big | 143.8 GB · Too big |
| Llama 3.3 70B InstructMeta | 45.2 GB · Too big | 77.7 GB · Too big | 143.8 GB · Too big |
| Mixtral 8x7B Instruct v0.1Mistral AI | 27.5 GB · Too big | 50.7 GB · Too big | 94.5 GB · Too big |
| Recursive FlintRecursive | 25.3 GB · Too big | 42.5 GB · Too big | 79.8 GB · Too big |
| Qwen3.6 35B-A3BAlibaba Qwen | 22.5 GB · Too big | 38.0 GB · Too big | 71.2 GB · Too big |
| Qwen3.8-35B-A3B (Empero Distill)Empero | 21.9 GB · Too big | 38.0 GB · Too big | 71.2 GB · Too big |
| Nanbeige4.3 33BNanbeige | 22.5 GB · Too big | 36.9 GB · Too big | 68.0 GB · Too big |
| Qwen2.5 32B InstructAlibaba Qwen | 22.0 GB · Too big | 37.0 GB · Too big | 67.7 GB · Too big |
| Qwen3 32BAlibaba Qwen | 21.9 GB · Too big | 37.0 GB · Too big | 67.7 GB · Too big |
| Gemma 4 31B*Google | 19.6 GB · Too big | 32.6 GB · Too big | 61.4 GB · Too big |
| Qwen3.8 27BAlibaba Qwen | 18.0 GB · Too big | 29.7 GB · Too big | 55.2 GB · Too big |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B*Google | 17.0 GB · Too big | 26.9 GB · Too big | 50.5 GB · Too big |
| LFM2.5-24B-A2BLiquid AI | 14.7 GB · Too big | 25.7 GB · Too big | 48.1 GB · Too big |
Each cell is the Hugging Face GGUF file size plus FP16 KV cache for an 8K-token context (or the model's maximum, if shorter). Fits = under 90% of 12 GB; Tight = 90 to 100%; Too big = over 12 GB. * = KV cache not included (no config data). Same data as the VRAM calculator and what can I run with 12 GB. Data checked 2026-10-30.
Looking at Qwen3.8-35B-A3B? It does not fit a 12 GB card fully in VRAM; see Qwen3.8-35B-A3B on an RTX 3060 12GB for the offload setup.
More for 12 GB cards
- Everything that fits in 12 GB, including image generation and gaming
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- VRAM calculator for other context lengths
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