What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB run locally?

4 models fit comfortably on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB with 32 GB system RAM. 7 more run with tradeoffs. Top pick: Gemma 4 E2B (Effective 2B).

What's the recommended runner for this hardware?

llama.cpp / Ollama (CUDA). This is the runner that gives best tokens-per-second on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB based on windows support and the GPU backend.

What can NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB run for vision?

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

Memory: 12 GB VRAM + 32 GB system RAM

Runner: llama.cpp / Ollama (CUDA)

Any Chat Coding Agents Reasoning Vision Long context Creative

Runs comfortably
4 models

Ranked by fit for vision use case + predicted speed. Click a row for VRAM breakdown.

#1Gemma 4 E2B (Effective 2B)

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 5.4 GBHeadroom: 6.6 GBTTFT: fast

ollama run gemma4:e2b

194

tok/s

Weights

1.21 GB

KV cache

0.25 GB

Activations

2.11 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~403 ms (fast)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

#2Gemma 4 E4B (Effective 4B)

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 6.9 GBHeadroom: 5.1 GBTTFT: noticeable

ollama run gemma4:e4b

tok/s

Weights

2.42 GB

KV cache

0.50 GB

Activations

2.17 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~806 ms (noticeable)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

#3Gemma 3 4B

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 6.9 GBHeadroom: 5.1 GBTTFT: noticeable

ollama run gemma3:4b

tok/s

Weights

2.42 GB

KV cache

0.50 GB

Activations

2.17 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~806 ms (noticeable)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

#4Phi-3.5 Vision

4.2B

phi

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 7.0 GBHeadroom: 5.0 GBTTFT: noticeable

tok/s

Weights

2.54 GB

KV cache

0.53 GB

Activations

2.17 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~847 ms (noticeable)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

Runs with tradeoffs
7 models

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

Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct

11B

llama

Commercial OK

Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 27.8 GBHeadroom: 3.4 GBTTFT: slow

• Partial CPU offload: ~57% of layers run on CPU

ollama run llama3.2-vision:11b

tok/s

Weights

11.69 GB

KV cache

5.50 GB

Activations

8.78 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~2217 ms (slow)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

Gemma 3 12B

12B

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 29.4 GBHeadroom: 1.8 GBTTFT: slow

• Partial CPU offload: ~59% of layers run on CPU

ollama run gemma3:12b

tok/s

Weights

12.75 GB

KV cache

6.00 GB

Activations

8.83 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~2419 ms (slow)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

Pixtral 12B

12B

mistral

Commercial OK

Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 29.4 GBHeadroom: 1.8 GBTTFT: slow

• Partial CPU offload: ~59% of layers run on CPU

ollama run pixtral:12b

tok/s

Weights

12.75 GB

KV cache

6.00 GB

Activations

8.83 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~2419 ms (slow)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

Gemma 4 26B MoE

26B

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 23.6 GBHeadroom: 7.6 GBTTFT: slow

• Partial CPU offload: ~49% of layers run on CPU

ollama run gemma4:26b-moe

tok/s

Weights

15.70 GB

KV cache

3.25 GB

Activations

2.83 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~5241 ms (slow)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

Gemma 3 27B

27B

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 24.3 GBHeadroom: 6.9 GBTTFT: slow

• Partial CPU offload: ~51% of layers run on CPU

ollama run gemma3:27b

tok/s

Weights

16.30 GB

KV cache

3.38 GB

Activations

2.86 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~5443 ms (slow)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

MedGemma 27B

27B

gemma

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 24.3 GBHeadroom: 6.9 GBTTFT: slow

• Partial CPU offload: ~51% of layers run on CPU

tok/s

Weights

16.30 GB

KV cache

3.38 GB

Activations

2.86 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~5443 ms (slow)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

Gemma 4 31B Dense

31B

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 27.4 GBHeadroom: 3.8 GBTTFT: slow

• Partial CPU offload: ~56% of layers run on CPU

ollama run gemma4:31b

tok/s

Weights

18.72 GB

KV cache

3.88 GB

Activations

2.98 GB

Runtime

1.80 GB

Time to first token (prefill, 512-token prompt): ~6249 ms (slow)

Model details →Run-on benchmark page →

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: 3 new comfortable, 40 new tradeoff

• Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
• Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct
• Qwen 3 4B
• Llama 3.1 8B Instruct

Shop this upgrade↗

Upgrade to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super

~$1099

16 GB VRAM (vs your 12 GB) plus a bandwidth jump from ~360 GB/s to ~736 GB/s.

Unlocks: 10 new comfortable

• Gemma 3 1B
• Llama 3.2 1B Instruct
• DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 7B
• Llama 3.1 8B 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: 16 new comfortable

• Gemma 3 1B
• Llama 3.2 1B Instruct
• Llama 3.2 3B Instruct
• Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct

Shop this upgrade↗

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Won't run
top 5 popular models

Need more memory than you have. Shown for orientation.

Qwen 3 235B-A22B

235B

qwen

Commercial OK