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NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB

Perfect for running Llama 4 8B, Qwen 2.5 7B, DeepSeek R1 7B and SDXL (Q4), SD 1.5 locally.

NVIDIA
VRAM

12GB GDDR6

Bandwidth

360 GB/s

Power

170W

Price

$250-300

Best AI Models for NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB

Llama 4 8B
Meta • 8B
6GB (Q4) required
Qwen 2.5 7B
Alibaba • 7B
5GB (Q4) required
DeepSeek R1 7B
DeepSeek • 7B
5GB (Q4) required
Phi-4
Microsoft • 3.8B
3GB (Q4) required

Advantages

  • Great value
  • 12GB sufficient
  • Low power
  • Widely available

Limitations

  • Older architecture
  • Limited for 14B+
  • Weak for FLUX
  • Lower performance

Alternatives to NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB

RTX 4060 Ti 16GB
Alternative
RX 7600 XT
Alternative
Used RTX 3070
Alternative

Where to Buy

Newegg
PC parts specialist
Amazon
Wide selection
Best Buy
In-store pickup

Best Use Cases

7-8B models
SDXL (Q4)
Daily chat
Entry-level

Specifications

VRAM:12GB GDDR6
CUDA Cores:3,584
Memory Bandwidth:360 GB/s
Power:170W
Release Date:2021-02

Compare GPUs

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