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Best local LLMs for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB

16GB · Ada

The only 16GB Ada card — that is the whole pitch. AD106, 4352 CUDA, 136 tensor cores. Handles 14B Q4_K_M fits (LocalScore 306 on Qwen2.5 14B page data) where 8GB cards cannot.

→explore the full catalogupgrade paths with live prices · what fits on each machine

Speed

computed band 31.0-49.0 tok/s for 8B Q4_K_M (roofline, 288 GB/s VRAM); community: 48.2 tok/s generation median (LocalScore 555) tok/s Llama 3.1 8B Instruct Q4_K_M (https://www.localscore.ai/accelerator/7)

Effective decode window: 0.55–0.88 of 288 GB/s nominal → ~158–253 GB/s effective (llama.cpp decode, Q4_K_M basis; arch window, community-calibrated)

What fits (computed)

→ 13b-q4 tight 14.6 of 16 GB usable — keep context modest

→ 3b-q4 full 2.8 GB needed of 16 GB usable — headroom for context

→ 4b-q4 full 3.7 GB needed of 16 GB usable — headroom for context

→ 8b-q4 full 6.1 GB needed of 16 GB usable — headroom for context

Cited community benches (1 rows)

→ 48.2 tok/s generation median (LocalScore 555) tok/s · Llama 3.1 8B Instruct Q4_K_M LocalScore median · source

Runs fully in memory (machine alternatives)

Nominal bandwidth: 288 GB/s — see the effective decode window above

→ qwen3:0.6b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 0.6B · 0.6GB · needs ~1GB (4k ctx)

→ qwen3:1.7b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 1.7B · 1.4GB · needs ~1.8GB (4k ctx)

→ qwen3:4b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 4B · 2.6GB · needs ~3.2GB (4k ctx)

→ llama3.2:1b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 1B · 1.3GB · needs ~1.4GB (4k ctx)

→ llama3.2:3b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 3B · 2.0GB · needs ~2.4GB (4k ctx)

→ gemma3:1b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 1B · 1.0GB · needs ~1.1GB (4k ctx)

→ phi4:mini on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) mini 3.8B · 2.5GB · needs ~3GB (4k ctx)

→ moondream:2b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 2B · 1.7GB · needs ~3.7GB (4k ctx)

→ whisper:tiny on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) tiny · 0.1GB · needs ~2.1GB (4k ctx)

→ whisper on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) base · 0.3GB · needs ~2.3GB (4k ctx)

→ whisper:small on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) small · 0.9GB · needs ~2.9GB (4k ctx)

→ whisper:medium on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) medium · 3.1GB · needs ~5.1GB (4k ctx)

→ kokoro:82m on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 82M · 0.3GB · needs ~2.3GB (4k ctx)

→ gemma3:4b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 4B · 3.3GB · needs ~3.8GB (4k ctx)

→ deepseek-r1:7b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) distill 7B · 4.7GB · needs ~4.9GB (4k ctx)

→ mistral:7b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 7B · 4.1GB · needs ~4.6GB (4k ctx)

→ llava:7b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 7B · 4.7GB · needs ~6.7GB (4k ctx)

→ qwen3:8b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 8B · 5.2GB · needs ~5.8GB (4k ctx)

→ qwen2.5vl:7b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 7B · 5.6GB · needs ~5.8GB (4k ctx)

→ llama3.1:8b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 8B · 4.9GB · needs ~5.4GB (4k ctx)

→ deepseek-r1:8b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) distill 8B · 4.9GB · needs ~5.4GB (4k ctx)

→ whisper:large-v3 on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) large-v3 · 6.2GB · needs ~8.2GB (4k ctx)

→ mistral-nemo:12b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 12B · 7.1GB · needs ~7.7GB (4k ctx)

→ sdxl on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) SDXL base · 6.9GB · needs ~8.9GB (4k ctx)

→ llava:13b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 13B · 8.0GB · needs ~11.1GB (4k ctx)

→ gemma3:12b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 12B · 8.1GB · needs ~9.6GB (4k ctx)

→ qwen3:14b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 14B · 9.3GB · needs ~9.9GB (4k ctx)

→ deepseek-r1:14b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) distill 14B · 9.0GB · needs ~9.8GB (4k ctx)

→ phi4:14b on Tesla M60 (16GB, used) ($35) 14B · 9.1GB · needs ~9.9GB (4k ctx)

→ gpt-oss:20b on Tesla M40 (24GB, used) ($50) 20B MoE · 14GB · needs ~14.2GB (4k ctx)

→ devstral:24b on Tesla M40 (24GB, used) ($50) 24B · 14.6GB · needs ~15.2GB (4k ctx)

Borderline — runs, but offloads

→ qwen3.8:27b 27B — 18.5 GB vs 16 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ qwen3:30b-a3b 30B-A3B MoE — 19.0 GB vs 16 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ qwen3-coder:30b-a3b 30B-A3B MoE — 19.0 GB vs 16 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ gemma3:27b 27B — 18.9 GB vs 16 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

→ flux:schnell schnell fp8 — 19.0 GB vs 16 GB usable — partial CPU offload, expect large speed loss

Gotchas

⚠ THE budget-VRAM Ada pick, but the 16GB adds capacity, not speed: identical 288 GB/s and core spec to the 8GB variant (clamshell GDDR6 config on the same 128-bit bus)

⚠ 128-bit bus feeding 16GB is the narrowest per-GB of the 40-series; large-context/prompt-heavy workloads stay bandwidth-starved

⚠ PCIe 4.0 x8 host interface

⚠ Launch price was criticized ($100 over the 8GB for ~10% VRAM cost) — buy on current street price, not MSRP logic

⚠ Memory clock 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective)

Where to go next

rtx-4070-ti-super

Same 16GB but 2.3x bandwidth (672 GB/s) and more CUDA cores

→ its best-models page

rtx-4090

24GB / 1008 GB/s ceiling

→ its best-models page

2026-10-01 · ← full hardware catalog · fit = working set vs VRAM · speeds are community-reported, cited in our knowledge base