Can a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 run Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B)?
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 has 12GB VRAM. Here's exactly whichprecision (FP16, FP8, GGUF)of Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B) fits and how smoothly it runs.
Runs locally — recommended
This GPU has enough VRAM for Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B). Best pick: Q4_K_M (4-bit Recommended) (~5.0GB) with 7.0GB headroom.
5.0GB
smallest fit on this GPU
Run it locally
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB) · ~$285 is a solid fit for Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B).
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Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B) variants on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
| Variant | Precision | Size | Total VRAM needed | Headroom | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M (4-bit Recommended)REC | q4_k_m | 5.0GB | 5.0GB | +7.0GB | ✓ Fits |
| FP8 (Quantized) | fp8 | 9.0GB | 9.0GB | +3.0GB | ✓ Fits |
| Q8_0 (8-bit GGUF) | q8_0 | 9.3GB | 9.3GB | +2.7GB | ✓ Fits |
| FP16 (Uncompressed) | fp16 | 17.5GB | 17.5GB | -5.5GB | ✗ OOM |
"Total VRAM needed" = variant size + 0.0GB estimated text-encoder/VAE overhead. Headroom = GPU VRAM (12GB) − total needed. Green ≥ 1.5GB headroom; Red ≤ −2GB (will OOM).
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 at a glance
VRAM
12GB
Est. price
$285
Best for
16.0GB Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B) and lighter
Other models on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
FLUX.1 DevFLUX.1 SchnellStable Diffusion XL (SDXL)Stable Diffusion 1.5Stable Diffusion 3 (SD3)Hunyuan VideoWan 2.1 VideoPony DiffusionLlama 3.2 (1B)Llama 3.2 (3B)DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (7B)DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (14B)
Other GPUs for Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (12GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (12GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 (16GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (24GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (10GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (16GB) (16GB)NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (8GB)Apple MacBook Pro (M3 Max) (36GB)