Best local AI models for NVIDIA RTX 3060 Laptop
6 GB GDDR6. At a 4k context, 114 of the 233 models in our catalog with verified parameter counts fit fully, up to Granite 3.3 2B / 8B at 8B parameters.
Check your own machine against every model →The largest models that fit fully
The 30 largest of the 114 models that fit; every smaller model in the catalog fits too. Best quant means the highest quality compression whose weights and 4k context both sit inside the memory.
| Model | Parameters | Best quant that fits | Memory used at 4k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Granite 3.3 2B / 8B | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| Ministral 3B / 8B | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| InternLM 3 8B | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| OpenCoder 1.5B / 8B | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| Seed-Coder 8B | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| MiniCPM-V 2.6 / MiniCPM-o 2.6 | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| Idefics 3 8B | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| Fuyu-8B | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| Emu3 | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large / Turbo | 8B | Q4_K_M | 5.9 GB |
| EXAONE 3.5 2.4B / 7.8B | 7.8B | Q4_K_M | 5.7 GB |
| Mistral 7B | 7B | Q4_K_M | 5.7 GB |
| Qwen2.5 0.5B / 1.5B / 3B / 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| OLMo 2 1B / 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Falcon 3 1B / 3B / 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Command R7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| OpenHermes 2.5 | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Zephyr 7B Beta | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| OpenChat 3.5 | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Starling LM 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Codestral Mamba 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| CodeGemma 2B / 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| aiXcoder-7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Nxcode / CodeQwen 1.5 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Janus-Pro 1B / 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Ruyi-Mini-7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Qwen2-Audio 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Qwen2.5-Omni 3B / 7B | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| YuE | 7B | Q5_K_M | 6 GB |
| Magicoder-S-DS 6.7B | 6.7B | Q5_K_M | 5.7 GB |
Close, but only with CPU offload
These need more than the card holds at their smallest practical quant, so part of the model runs from system memory (figures assume 32 GB of it). They work, several times slower.
| Model | Parameters | Memory at Q4_K_M | System RAM at 4k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.1 8B | 8B | 6.4 GB needed | 8.4 GB |
| Chroma | 8.9B | 6.5 GB needed | 8.5 GB |
| Gemma 2 9B | 9B | 8 GB needed | 10 GB |
| Nemotron Nano 4B / 9B | 9B | 6.6 GB needed | 8.6 GB |
| GLM-4 9B / GLM-4.5-Air | 9B | 6.6 GB needed | 8.6 GB |
| Yi-Coder 1.5B / 9B | 9B | 6.6 GB needed | 8.6 GB |
| GLM-4-9B-Chat / CodeGeeX4 | 9B | 6.6 GB needed | 8.6 GB |
| GLM-4V-9B / GLM-4.1V-Thinking | 9B | 6.6 GB needed | 8.6 GB |
| Mochi 1 | 10B | 7.3 GB needed | 9.3 GB |
| Open-Sora 2.0 | 11B | 8.1 GB needed | 10.1 GB |
How to read this
The NVIDIA RTX 3060 Laptop graphics card features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory. This dedicated video memory determines which artificial intelligence models you can run entirely on your graphics hardware. Running a model completely inside this memory ensures the fastest possible processing speeds for your tasks.
The quantization column shows the compression level applied to each model. We recommend the Q4_K_M or Q5_K_M formats because they offer an excellent balance between file size and output quality. For example, the 8B parameter version of Granite 3.3 fits in 5.9 GB of memory using the Q4_K_M format. Similarly, the 7B parameter version of Qwen2.5 fits in 6 GB of memory using the Q5_K_M format.
Many popular models require more than the available 6 GB of video memory. To run these larger models, you must offload some of the workload to your system RAM. This offloading process allows you to run larger models but it reduces your processing speed because system RAM is much slower than graphics memory.
If your laptop has 32 GB of system RAM, you can run larger models like Llama 3.1 8B. This model needs 6.4 GB of memory at the Q4_K_M quantization and requires 8.4 GB of system RAM. You can also run Gemma 2 9B, which needs 8 GB of memory at Q4_K_M and requires 10 GB of system RAM. Even larger models like Mochi 1 10B can run by using 7.3 GB of memory at Q4_K_M and 9.3 GB of system RAM.
Please note that these memory calculations are based on a standard context window of 4k tokens. If you increase the context window to process longer documents or longer conversations, the model will require more memory. This extra memory usage might force you to use a lower quantization or offload more data to your system RAM.