Llama on NVIDIA Ampere

Can I run Llama 3.2 3B on an RTX 3060 12GB?

Yes. Llama 3.2 3B at Q4_K_M uses 3.5 GB of the 10.5 GB available on a RTX 3060 12GB, and runs at about 97.2 tokens per second. You can push the context to 72K.

Runs comfortably

3.5 GB of 10.5 GB · 34%
010 GB
Weights 1.8 GB
KV cache 0.9 GB
Runtime overhead 0.8 GB

Llama 3.2 3B at Q4_K_M leaves 7.0 GB spare on a RTX 3060 12GB. There is room to raise the context length or move up a quantisation level.

Generation97.2tok/s
Prompt processing1636tok/s
Max context72Ktokens
KV per 1K tokens0GB

Every quantisation of Llama 3.2 3B on a RTX 3060 12GB

Highlighted row is the highest quality that still fits at 8K context.

QuantisationbpwWeights TotalVerdictMax ctxtok/s
FP16 / BF16 16.00 6.0 GB 7.7 GB Runs comfortably 34K 34.9
INT8 / W8A8 8.50 3.1 GB 4.8 GB Runs comfortably 60K 63.2
Q8_0 (GGUF) 8.50 3.1 GB 4.8 GB Runs comfortably 60K 63.2
FP8 (E4M3) 8.00 3.0 GB 4.7 GB Runs comfortably 61K 65.0
Q6_K 6.56 2.5 GB 4.1 GB Runs comfortably 66K 77.0
AWQ 4-bit 4.25 2.1 GB 3.8 GB Runs comfortably 69K 86.6
GPTQ 4-bit 4.25 2.1 GB 3.8 GB Runs comfortably 69K 86.6
MXFP4 4.25 2.1 GB 3.8 GB Runs comfortably 69K 86.6
Q5_K_M 5.67 2.1 GB 3.8 GB Runs comfortably 69K 86.9
Q5_K_S 5.52 2.1 GB 3.7 GB Runs comfortably 70K 88.8
Q4_K_M 4.85 1.8 GB 3.5 GB Runs comfortably 72K 97.2
Q4_K_S 4.58 1.8 GB 3.4 GB Runs comfortably 72K 101
Q4_0 4.55 1.7 GB 3.4 GB Runs comfortably 73K 102
IQ4_XS 4.25 1.6 GB 3.3 GB Runs comfortably 73K 106
Q3_K_M 3.91 1.5 GB 3.2 GB Runs comfortably 74K 112
IQ3_M 3.70 1.5 GB 3.1 GB Runs comfortably 75K 116
IQ3_XXS 3.06 1.3 GB 2.9 GB Runs comfortably 77K 130
Q2_K 2.63 1.1 GB 2.8 GB Runs comfortably 78K 142
IQ2_XXS 2.06 0.9 GB 2.6 GB Runs comfortably 80K 161
IQ1_M 1.75 0.8 GB 2.5 GB Runs comfortably 81K 173

Also worth checking

Llama 3.2 3B on every GPU
Full hardware tableEverything that runs on a RTX 3060 12GB
Full model tableWhy the KV cache is the part that bites
Guide