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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB

NVIDIA · 12GB GDDR6 · Can run 40 models

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Manufacturer NVIDIA
VRAM 12 GB
Memory Type GDDR6
Architecture Ampere
CUDA Cores 3,584
Tensor Cores 112
Bandwidth 360 GB/s
TDP 170W
MSRP $329
Released Feb 25, 2021

AI Notes

The RTX 3060 12GB punches above its weight for AI thanks to its 12GB VRAM at a budget price. It can run 7B models at full precision and 13B models with Q4 quantization. Inference speed is slower than newer cards, but the VRAM capacity makes it a popular budget AI card on the used market.

Compatible Models

Model Parameters Best Quant VRAM Used Fit Est. Speed
Qwen 3 0.6B 600M Q4_K_M 2.5 GB Runs ~144 tok/s
Gemma 3 1B 1B Q8_0 2 GB Runs ~180 tok/s
Llama 3.2 1B 1B Q8_0 3 GB Runs ~120 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 1.5B 1.5B Q8_0 3 GB Runs ~120 tok/s
Gemma 2 2B 2B Q8_0 4 GB Runs ~90 tok/s
Gemma 3n E2B 2B Q4_K_M 3.3 GB Runs ~109 tok/s
Llama 3.2 3B 3B Q8_0 5 GB Runs ~72 tok/s
Phi-3 Mini 3.8B 3.8B Q8_0 5.8 GB Runs ~62 tok/s
Phi-4 Mini 3.8B 3.8B Q4_K_M 4.5 GB Runs ~80 tok/s
Gemma 3 4B 4B Q4_K_M 5 GB Runs ~72 tok/s
Gemma 3n E4B 4B Q4_K_M 4.5 GB Runs ~80 tok/s
Qwen 3 4B 4B Q4_K_M 4.5 GB Runs ~80 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~40 tok/s
Falcon 3 7B 7B Q4_K_M 6.8 GB Runs ~53 tok/s
Mistral 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~40 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~40 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 Coder 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~40 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 VL 7B 7B Q4_K_M 7 GB Runs ~51 tok/s
Cogito 8B 8B Q4_K_M 7.5 GB Runs ~48 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 8B 8B Q4_K_M 7.5 GB Runs ~48 tok/s
Llama 3.1 8B 8B Q8_0 10 GB Runs ~36 tok/s
Nemotron 3 Nano 8B 8B Q4_K_M 7.5 GB Runs ~48 tok/s
Qwen 3 8B 8B Q4_K_M 7.5 GB Runs ~48 tok/s
Falcon 3 10B 10B Q4_K_M 8.5 GB Runs ~42 tok/s
Llama 3.2 Vision 11B 11B Q4_K_M 8.5 GB Runs ~42 tok/s
Mistral Nemo 12B 12B Q4_K_M 9.5 GB Runs ~38 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 14B 14B Q4_K_M 9.9 GB Runs ~36 tok/s
Phi-4 14B 14B Q4_K_M 9.9 GB Runs ~36 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B 14B Q4_K_M 9.9 GB Runs ~36 tok/s
Gemma 2 9B 9B Q8_0 11 GB Runs (tight) ~33 tok/s
Gemma 3 12B 12B Q4_K_M 10.5 GB Runs (tight) ~34 tok/s
Phi-4 Reasoning 14B 14B Q4_K_M 11 GB Runs (tight) ~33 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 Coder 14B 14B Q4_K_M 12 GB CPU Offload ~9 tok/s
Qwen 3 14B 14B Q4_K_M 12 GB CPU Offload ~9 tok/s
StarCoder2 15B 15B Q8_0 17 GB CPU Offload ~6 tok/s
Codestral 22B 22B Q4_K_M 14.7 GB CPU Offload ~7 tok/s
Devstral 24B 24B Q4_K_M 17 GB CPU Offload ~6 tok/s
Magistral Small 24B 24B Q4_K_M 17 GB CPU Offload ~6 tok/s
Mistral Small 3.1 24B 24B Q4_K_M 18 GB CPU Offload ~6 tok/s
Gemma 2 27B 27B Q4_K_M 17.7 GB CPU Offload ~6 tok/s
29 model(s) are too large for this hardware.