Can the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB (used) run Llama 4 Maverick (17B x 128E) Instruct?
Does not fit at Q4_K_M.
Llama 4 Maverick (17B x 128E) Instruct is 400B parameters (MoE; all experts resident). At Q4_K_M the weights are about 223.5 GiB; with the 1.5 GiB runtime reserve that is 225.0 GiB against the card's 12GB, about 213.0 GiB more than the card has.
All three quants
12GB card| Quant | Weights | With reserve | Verdict | Headroom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_Mthe everyday quant | 223.5 GiB | 225.0 GiB | Does not fit | short 213.0 GiB |
| Q8_0near-lossless | 394.9 GiB | 396.4 GiB | Does not fit | short 384.4 GiB |
| FP16full weights | 745.1 GiB | 746.6 GiB | Does not fit | short 734.6 GiB |
Verdict rules: fits comfortably when weights plus reserve sit within 85% of VRAM; tight when they fit with little left for context; CPU offload when they exceed VRAM by up to 2x (runs, slowly, with layers in system RAM); no beyond that. The KV cache per token depends on the model's architecture and is not modelled here.
The numbers for this pairing
At Q4_K_M the weights take about 223.5 GiB, so with the 1.5 GiB runtime reserve it needs 225.0 GB: 213.0 GB more than the card's 12 GB.
No version of it fits entirely in this card's memory, so it would lean on system RAM and run far slower.
It is a mixture-of-experts model: about 17B of its 400B parameters work on each token, which helps speed, but all of them still have to fit in memory.
At about $455, this card costs roughly $38 per GB of VRAM.
Running it at its full 170 W board power for 4 hours a day would use about 20 kWh a month, about $3.75 at the US average residential rate of 18.4 cents per kWh (2026-05); real use sits below that ceiling.
Prices are the lowest current listings our tracker saw on Oct 7, 2026, since averages include premium variants; launch prices are marked where we have no listing.
Not this card. These fit it comfortably at Q4.
Nothing in the consumer catalog fits Llama 4 Maverick (17B x 128E) Instruct at Q4 on a single card; this is multi-GPU or datacenter territory, or a job for hosted inference (see PicksByModel for per-token pricing).
What the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB (used) does run well → · Llama 4 Maverick (17B x 128E) Instruct on every card →
About the model
Llama 4 Maverick (17B x 128E) Instruct by Meta: 1,048,576-token native context, text + vision, released 2025 under the Llama 4 Community License. Model card → · Hosted pricing on PicksByModel →