Can I run Mistral 7B v0.3 on NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB?
Yes: Mistral 7B v0.3 runs on NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB with Q8_0 at roughly 27 tokens/s. Estimated memory 9.0 GiB at 8,192 tokens of context.
With Q8_0 you can push the context to about 14,848 tokens before memory runs out (F16 KV cache).
Memory by quantisation (8,192-token context)
| Quantisation | Memory | Verdict | Est. speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| F16Unquantized reference | 15.3 GiB | Needs CPU offload | — |
| Q8_0Near-lossless | 9.0 GiB | Fits | ~27 tok/s |
| Q6_KVery close to F16 | 7.3 GiB | Fits | ~33 tok/s |
| Q5_K_MGreat quality/size | 6.6 GiB | Fits | ~38 tok/s |
| Q4_K_MBest default for most | 5.9 GiB | Fits | ~43 tok/s |
| IQ4_XSSmaller 4-bit (imatrix) | 5.4 GiB | Fits | ~48 tok/s |
| Q3_K_MNoticeable loss | 5.1 GiB | Fits | ~51 tok/s |
| Q2_KLast resort; big loss | 4.6 GiB | Fits | ~57 tok/s |
NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB offers about 12 GiB of memory (92% usable for a model) at 360 GB/s. Speed is a bandwidth-bound estimate of single-stream generation at 65% efficiency; real results vary by runtime, drivers and settings, so measure on your machine.
How this is calculated
Weights ≈ parameters × bits per weight ÷ 8. KV cache ≈ 2 × 32 layers × 8 KV heads × 128 head dim × 2 bytes per token. Decode speed ≈ efficiency × memory bandwidth ÷ bytes read per token. Learn the maths in VRAM math and memory bandwidth, or try the VRAM calculator.
Mistral 7B v0.3 on other hardware
Similar models on NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB
Running slowly or out of memory? See CUDA out of memory and the quantisation lesson.