RUNLOCALAIv38
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RUNLOCALAI · v38
Will it run? / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB

What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB run?

Build: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB + — + 32 GB RAM (windows)

Memory: 12 GB VRAM + 32 GB system RAM
Runner: llama.cpp / Ollama (CUDA)
AnyChatCodingAgentsReasoningVisionLong contextCreative

Runs comfortably
103 models

Full-VRAM resident, with room for context. No compromises.

#1all-MiniLM-L6-v2
0.022B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 256VRAM: 1.8 GBHeadroom: 10.2 GBTTFT: instant
17617
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.01 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.00 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~4 ms (instant)
Model details →
#2Piper
0.025B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 0VRAM: 1.8 GBHeadroom: 10.2 GBTTFT: instant
15503
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.02 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.00 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~5 ms (instant)
Model details →
#3Whisper Tiny
0.039B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 30VRAM: 1.8 GBHeadroom: 10.2 GBTTFT: instant
9938
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.02 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.00 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~8 ms (instant)
Model details →
#4Whisper Base
0.074B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 30VRAM: 1.8 GBHeadroom: 10.2 GBTTFT: instant
5238
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.04 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.00 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~15 ms (instant)
Model details →
#5Kokoro 82M
0.082B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 0VRAM: 1.9 GBHeadroom: 10.1 GBTTFT: instant
4727
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.05 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.00 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~17 ms (instant)
Model details →
#6all-mpnet-base-v2
0.109B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 384VRAM: 1.9 GBHeadroom: 10.1 GBTTFT: instant
3556
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.07 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.00 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~22 ms (instant)
Model details →
#7paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2
0.118B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 128VRAM: 1.9 GBHeadroom: 10.1 GBTTFT: instant
3285
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.07 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.00 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~24 ms (instant)
Model details →
#8Nomic Embed Text v1.5
0.137B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 2.0 GBHeadroom: 10.0 GBTTFT: instant
2829
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.08 GB
KV cache
0.07 GB
Activations
0.01 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~28 ms (instant)
Model details →
#9SmolLM2 135M Instruct
0.135B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 2.0 GBHeadroom: 10.0 GBTTFT: instant
2871
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.08 GB
KV cache
0.07 GB
Activations
0.01 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~27 ms (instant)
Model details →
#10GTE ModernBERT Base
0.149B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 2.0 GBHeadroom: 10.0 GBTTFT: instant
2601
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.09 GB
KV cache
0.07 GB
Activations
0.01 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~30 ms (instant)
Model details →
#11Whisper Small
0.244B
other
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 30VRAM: 2.0 GBHeadroom: 10.0 GBTTFT: instant
1588
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.15 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.01 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~49 ms (instant)
Model details →
#12Gemma 3 270M
0.27B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 2.1 GBHeadroom: 9.9 GBTTFT: instant
1435
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
0.16 GB
KV cache
0.14 GB
Activations
0.02 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~54 ms (instant)
Model details →

Runs with tradeoffs
146 models

Tight VRAM, partial CPU offload, or context-limited.

FLUX.1 [dev]
12B
other
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 0VRAM: 9.4 GBHeadroom: 2.6 GBTTFT: slow
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 2.6 GB headroom left for context growth
32
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
7.25 GB
KV cache
0.00 GB
Activations
0.36 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~2419 ms (slow)
Model details →
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
8B
llama
Commercial OK
Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 11.8 GBHeadroom: 0.2 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 0.2 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run llama3.1:8b
28
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
8.50 GB
KV cache
1.07 GB
Activations
0.43 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1613 ms (noticeable)
Model details →
Qwen 3 30B-A3B
30B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 24.6 GBHeadroom: 6.6 GBTTFT: slow
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~51% of layers run on CPU
ollama run qwen3:30b
13
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
18.11 GB
KV cache
3.75 GB
Activations
0.91 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~6047 ms (slow)
Model details →
Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
32B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 24.2 GBHeadroom: 7.0 GBTTFT: slow
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~50% of layers run on CPU
ollama run qwen2.5-coder:32b
12
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
19.32 GB
KV cache
2.15 GB
Activations
0.97 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~6450 ms (slow)
Model details →
Qwen 3 32B
32B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 26.1 GBHeadroom: 5.1 GBTTFT: slow
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~54% of layers run on CPU
ollama run qwen3:32b
12
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
19.32 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.97 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~6450 ms (slow)
Model details →
Gemma 4 31B Dense
31B
gemma
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 25.3 GBHeadroom: 5.9 GBTTFT: slow
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~53% of layers run on CPU
ollama run gemma4:31b
13
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
18.72 GB
KV cache
3.88 GB
Activations
0.94 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~6249 ms (slow)
Model details →
Qwen 3 8B
8B
qwen
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 10.9 GBHeadroom: 1.1 GBTTFT: noticeable
  • • Tight VRAM fit — only 1.1 GB headroom left for context growth
ollama run qwen3:8b
48
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
4.83 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.25 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~1613 ms (noticeable)
Model details →
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B
32B
deepseek
Commercial OK
Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 26.1 GBHeadroom: 5.1 GBTTFT: slow
  • • Partial CPU offload: ~54% of layers run on CPU
ollama run deepseek-r1:32b
12
tok/s
Estimated
Weights
19.32 GB
KV cache
4.00 GB
Activations
0.97 GB
Runtime
1.80 GB
Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~6450 ms (slow)
Model details →

What if you upgraded?

Hypothetical scenarios. We re-ran the compatibility engine for each.

+32 GB system RAM

~$80–150

Doubles your CPU-offload working set. Helps when models don't quite fit in VRAM.

Unlocks: 158 new tradeoff

  • • FLUX.1 [dev]
  • • Llama 3.1 8B Instruct
  • • Qwen 3 30B-A3B
  • • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
Shop this upgrade↗

Upgrade to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super

~$829

16 GB VRAM (vs your 12 GB) plus a bandwidth jump from ~360 GB/s to ~672 GB/s.

Unlocks: 69 new comfortable

  • • Gemma 4 E4B (Effective 4B)
  • • Qwen 3 4B
  • • Gemma 3 4B
  • • E5 Mistral 7B Instruct
Shop this upgrade↗

Add a second NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB

~$249

Tensor parallelism splits the model across both cards, effectively doubling VRAM. Bandwidth doesn't double — runs ~1.5× the single-card speed in practice.

Unlocks: 105 new comfortable

  • • DeepSeek V2 Lite Chat
  • • Gemma 4 E4B (Effective 4B)
  • • Qwen 3 4B
  • • Gemma 3 4B
Shop this upgrade↗

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Won't run
top 5 popular models

Need more memory than you have. Shown for orientation.

DeepSeek V4 Pro (1.6T MoE)
1600B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (12 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

—
Qwen 3.5 235B-A17B (MoE)
397B
qwen
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (12 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

—
Qwen 3 235B-A22B
235B
qwen
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (12 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

—
DeepSeek R1 (671B reasoning)
671B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (12 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

—
DeepSeek V4 Flash (284B MoE)
284B
deepseek
Commercial OK

Even with CPU offload, needs more memory than your VRAM (12 GB) + 60% of system RAM (19 GB) combined.

—

How to read these numbers

Measured here
Measured here - RunLocalAI ran this exact combo on owner hardware with public evidence.

Source-backed
Source-backed / community - a reproduced public source supports the speed, but it is not labeled as owner-measured.

Extrapolated
Extrapolated - predicted from a measured benchmark on similar-bandwidth hardware.

Estimated
Estimated - formula based on VRAM bandwidth and model architecture; not a benchmark row.

RunLocalAI Will-It-Run Framework →

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