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RTX 3060 12GB vs RTX 3090 24GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 3090 24GB has about 160% more memory bandwidth (936 vs 360 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 160% faster on the RTX 3090 24GB. The RTX 3090 24GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 33 vs 18 of 61 models (24 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the RTX 3090 24GB but not the RTX 3060 12GB: GLM-4.7-Flash (31.2B). MSRP is $329 for the RTX 3060 12GB vs $1,499 for the RTX 3090 24GB. MSRP is a launch list price, not live retail — Amazon prices move; click through for the current price. In the Q4/8K head-to-head below (40 shared models), the RTX 3090 24GB posts the higher tok/s in 37 rows vs 3. Methodology.

Spec comparison

RTX 3060 12GBRTX 3090 24GB
VendorNVIDIANVIDIA
VRAM12 GB24 GB
Memory typeGDDR6GDDR6X
Memory bandwidth360 GB/s936 GB/s
TDP170 W350 W
MSRP (list)$329$1,499
BuyMSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC (affiliate) · More listingsMSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ventus 3X 24G OC (affiliate) · More listings

MSRP is the launch list price, not live retail. Buy links are Amazon affiliate links — the price after you click is the live price.

Q4 / 8K head-to-head — top 15 of 40 shared models

ModelParams (B)RTX 3060 12GB tok/sRTX 3060 12GB fitsRTX 3090 24GB tok/sRTX 3090 24GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.8286.4 est.Yes744.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.0229.1 est.Yes595.6 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.2190.9 est.Yes496.4 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.0114.5 est.Yes297.8 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.593.0 est.No198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.593.0 est.No198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.289.3 est.No198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.593.0 est.No198.5 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.2122.9 measuredYes186.1 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
gpt-oss-20b21.584.0 measuredNo161.8 measuredYesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next79.715.2 est.No158.2 est.NoRTX 3090 24GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.860.3 est.Yes156.7 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.860.3 est.Yes156.7 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.358.7 est.Yes152.7 est.YesRTX 3090 24GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct81.314.6 est.No152.3 est.NoRTX 3090 24GB

est. = bandwidth-based estimate; measured = curated real benchmark that overrides the estimate. Fits = weights + KV(8K) + 1 GB overhead ≤ 95% of VRAM.

Fit coverage at Q4 / 8K

RTX 3060 12GBRTX 3090 24GB
Catalog models that fit18 of 6133 of 61
Largest exclusive fit—GLM-4.7-Flash (31.2B)

RTX 3060 12GB details → · RTX 3090 24GB details →