Best LLMs for 12 GB VRAM

Autor: Jakub Rusinowski · Ostatnia aktualizacja: 30 lipca 2026

These are the strongest local models that fit entirely in 12 GB of VRAM, ranked by capability, with the quantization level and estimated tokens/sec needed to fit.

GPUs at This Tier

Ranked Models

Qwen 2.5 Family — Qwen 2.5 14B InstructQ4_K_M · 9.5 GB · ~48 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen 3 — Qwen 3 14BQ4_K_M · 9.5 GB · ~48 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
DeepSeek R1 — DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14BQ4_K_M · 9.2 GB · ~50 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Phi-4 Family — Phi-4 (14B)Q4_K_M · 9.2 GB · ~50 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen3-Coder — Qwen3-Coder 80B-A3B (MoE)Q4_K_M · 7.5 GB · ~400 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen 3 — Qwen 3 30B-A3B (MoE)Q4_K_M · 8 GB · ~400 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Granite 3.0 — Granite 3.0 8B InstructQ4_K_M · 5.5 GB · ~83 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen 3.5 (Legacy Listing — Unverified) — Qwen 3.5 14BQ4_K_M · 9.5 GB · ~48 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Bonsai 27B — Ternary Bonsai 27BTernary (1.58-bit, ~1.71 bpw) · 5.9 GB · ~77 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen 2.5 Family — Qwen 2.5 7B InstructQ4_K_M · 4.8 GB · ~95 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen 3 — Qwen 3 8BQ4_K_M · 5.5 GB · ~83 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
DeepSeek R1 — DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8BQ4_K_M · 5.8 GB · ~79 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen3-Coder — Qwen3-Coder 8BQ4_K_M · 5.5 GB · ~83 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Mistral Family — Mistral NeMo 12BQ4_K_M · 8.5 GB · ~54 tok/s on Intel Arc B580
Qwen 3.5 (Legacy Listing — Unverified) — Qwen 3.5 14BQ4_K_M · 9 GB · ~51 tok/s on Intel Arc B580

FAQ

What LLMs run well with 12 GB VRAM?

Qwen 2.5 Family, Qwen 3, DeepSeek R1, Phi-4 Family, Qwen3-Coder all fit in 12 GB VRAM.

Which GPUs have 12 GB VRAM?

Intel Arc B580, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super.

Can-I-Run Pages Near 12 GB

Adjacent VRAM Tiers

Buying Guide

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