picksbycard
August 23, 2026No. 113
Arc B580 · 12GB GDDR6

Can the Arc B580 run Qwen3.6 27B?

Only with CPU offload at Q4_K_M.

Qwen3.6 27B is 27.8B parameters. At Q4_K_M the weights are about 15.5 GiB; with the 1.5 GiB runtime reserve that is 17.0 GiB against the card's 12GB, about 5.0 GiB more than the card has.

All three quants

12GB card
QuantWeightsWith reserveVerdictHeadroom
Q4_K_Mthe everyday quant15.5 GiB17.0 GiBOnly with CPU offloadshort 5.0 GiB
Q8_0near-lossless27.4 GiB28.9 GiBDoes not fitshort 16.9 GiB
FP16full weights51.8 GiB53.3 GiBDoes not fitshort 41.3 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.

Not this card. These fit it comfortably at Q4.

What the Arc B580 does run well → · Qwen3.6 27B on every card →

About the model

Qwen3.6 27B by Alibaba Qwen: 262,144-token native context, text + vision, released 2026 under the Apache-2.0. Model card → · Hosted pricing on PicksByModel →

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