GeForce RTX 3060 12GB Price & Used Prices: Which Local LLMs Can It Run?
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The GeForce RTX 3060 12GB has 12GB of GDDR6 memory with 360 GB/s of bandwidth. The median asking price is about $295 on Xianyu. At 4-bit quantization and 8K context it fits a dense model of up to about 16B parameters, at roughly 25 tokens/s.
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GeForce RTX 3060 12GB price history
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Full GeForce RTX 3060 12GB specifications
- Memory12 GB · GDDR6
- Bandwidth360 GB/s
- FP16 / BF1651 TFLOPS
- INT8101.9 TOPS
- Bus width
- 192-bit
- Architecture
- Ampere (GA106)
- Cores
- 3,584
- Tensor cores
- 112
- Ecosystem
- CUDA
- Interface
- PCIe 4.0 x16
- NVLink
- Not supported
- Power
- 170 W
- Type
- Consumer
- Launch date
- Feb 25, 2021
- MSRP
- $329
What LLMs can the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB run?
Models up to 50B parameters on a single GeForce RTX 3060 12GB, versions released since 2026 only
| Model | Size | Runs? | Speed t/s | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Gemma 4 E4B8B | 3.8 GB | Runs | 64.7 | 128K |
 Qwen3.5 9B9.7B | 4.1 GB | Runs | 59.6 | 229K |
| Gemma 4 12B12B | 4.7 GB | Runs | 51.5 | 256K |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B25.2B (3.8B active) | 10.5 GB | Runs | 93.6 | 52K |
| Qwen3.6 27B27.8B | 11.8 GB | Too big | — | — |
| Qwen3.8 27B27.8B | 9.8 GB | Runs | 25.8 | 29K |
 GLM 4.7 Flash30B (3B active) | 11.9 GB | Needs RAM offload | 48.8 | 185K |
| Gemma 4 31B30.7B | 11.8 GB | Too big | — | — |
| Qwen3.6 35B A3B36B (3B active) | 12.3 GB | Needs RAM offload | 72 | 256K |
| Model | Size | Runs? | Speed t/s | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 E4B8B | 5 GB | Runs | 50 | 128K |
| Qwen3.5 9B9.7B | 5.7 GB | Runs | 43.8 | 182K |
| Gemma 4 12B12B | 7.1 GB | Runs | 35.1 | 256K |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B25.2B (3.8B active) | 16.9 GB | Needs RAM offload | 34.1 | 256K |
| Qwen3.6 27B27.8B | 16.8 GB | Too big | — | — |
| Qwen3.8 27B27.8B | 16.5 GB | Too big | — | — |
| GLM 4.7 Flash30B (3B active) | 18.3 GB | Needs RAM offload | 34.6 | 180K |
| Gemma 4 31B30.7B | 18.3 GB | Too big | — | — |
| Qwen3.6 35B A3B36B (3B active) | 22.1 GB | Needs RAM offload | 46.5 | 256K |
| Model | Size | Runs? | Speed t/s | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 E4B8B | 8.2 GB | Runs | 31.2 | 128K |
| Qwen3.5 9B9.7B | 9.5 GB | Runs | 26.9 | 68K |
| Gemma 4 12B12B | 12.7 GB | Too big | — | — |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B25.2B (3.8B active) | 26.9 GB | Needs RAM offload | 22.8 | 256K |
| Qwen3.6 27B27.8B | 28.6 GB | Too big | — | — |
| Qwen3.8 27B27.8B | 29 GB | Too big | — | — |
| GLM 4.7 Flash30B (3B active) | 31.8 GB | Needs RAM offload | 21.4 | 170K |
| Gemma 4 31B30.7B | 32.6 GB | Too big | — | — |
| Qwen3.6 35B A3B36B (3B active) | 36.9 GB | Needs RAM offload | 30.3 | 256K |
RunsFits fully in VRAM; speed is estimated from VRAM bandwidth.
Needs RAM offloadMoE only: expert weights sit in system RAM, so speed is estimated from 70 GB/s RAM bandwidth.
Too bigWon’t fit on one card at this quantization, even with RAM offload.
Dual, 4x and 8x GeForce RTX 3060 12GB for LLMs: which models fit?
Cards needed for 50B+ models released since 2026, with vLLM tensor parallelism at 32K context
| Model | Size | Cards | Total price | Total VRAM | Speed t/s | Total power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 Flash Next176B (6B active) | 78.9 GB | 8 cards | $2,357 | 96 GB | 63.9 | 1,360 W |
At this quantization, even 8 × GeForce RTX 3060 12GB cannot hold any model over 50B.
At this quantization, even 8 × GeForce RTX 3060 12GB cannot hold any model over 50B.
Card counts are 1 / 2 / 4 / 8, each using 90% of its VRAM. Speed is based on one card’s bandwidth; price covers GPUs only. No NVLink; cards talk over PCIe. Whether it runs also depends on vLLM support.
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FAQ
How large a model can the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB run?
A single GeForce RTX 3060 12GB has 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM. At 4-bit quantization and 8K context it fits a dense model of up to about 16B parameters, or about 9B at 8-bit. MoE models can offload experts to system RAM to run larger ones, such as Qwen3.6 35B A3B (36B).
Can the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB run a 70B model?
Not on a single card. At 4-bit with an 8K context a 70B dense model needs about 43GB, more than the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB's 12GB. It runs if you split the layers across 4 cards with llama.cpp (48GB total).
What are the best LLMs to run on the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB?
Among models released in 2026, the largest dense model that fits entirely in VRAM at 4-bit is Gemma 4 12B, at an estimated 35.1 tokens/s. The full list is in the table above.
How many tokens per second does the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB get on LLMs?
Estimated from memory bandwidth at 4-bit and 8K context: 8B dense: about 47.9 tokens/s and 14B dense: about 28.4 tokens/s. MoE models read only the active parameters for each token, so they run much faster. Real-world results are usually 70%–100% of the estimate.
What LLMs can dual GeForce RTX 3060 12GB cards run?
With vLLM tensor parallelism at 4-bit and 32K context, even 8 GeForce RTX 3060 12GB cards cannot fit any model of 50B or larger released in 2026.
How much does a GeForce RTX 3060 12GB cost?
As of Sep 29, 2026: eBay median $420 (125 listings), Amazon.jp median $437 (7 listings), and Xianyu median $295 (8 listings). Figures are medians of live listings, refreshed every 6 hours.
Is the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB price going up or down?
As of Sep 29, 2026, the Xianyu median is up 1.5% over 7 days, up 1.5% over 30 days.
GeForce RTX 3060 12GB vs GeForce RTX 5070: which is better for LLMs?
The GeForce RTX 5070 has 12GB of VRAM and 672 GB/s of bandwidth; the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB has 12GB and 360 GB/s. At the Xianyu median, the GeForce RTX 5070 costs about $926, 214.4% more than the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB ($295). For 14B dense models at 4-bit, the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB is estimated at about 28.4 tokens/s and the GeForce RTX 5070 at about 51.9 tokens/s.