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RTX 3060 12GB vs RTX 5080 16GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 5080 16GB has about 167% more memory bandwidth (960 vs 360 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 167% faster on the RTX 5080 16GB. The RTX 5080 16GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 25 vs 18 of 61 models (16 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the RTX 5080 16GB but not the RTX 3060 12GB: gpt-oss-20b (21.5B). MSRP is $329 for the RTX 3060 12GB vs $999 for the RTX 5080 16GB. 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 5080 16GB posts the higher tok/s in 36 rows vs 4. Methodology.

Spec comparison

RTX 3060 12GBRTX 5080 16GB
VendorNVIDIANVIDIA
VRAM12 GB16 GB
Memory typeGDDR6GDDR7
Memory bandwidth360 GB/s960 GB/s
TDP170 W360 W
MSRP (list)$329$999
BuyMSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC (affiliate) · More listingsNVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition (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 5080 16GB tok/sRTX 5080 16GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.8286.4 est.Yes763.6 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.0229.1 est.Yes610.9 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.2190.9 est.Yes509.1 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.593.0 est.No440.9 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.593.0 est.No440.9 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.593.0 est.No440.9 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.289.3 est.No423.2 est.NoRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.0114.5 est.Yes305.5 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
gpt-oss-20b21.584.0 measuredNo204.9 measuredYesRTX 5080 16GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.2122.9 measuredYes190.9 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.37.231.8 est.Yes163.6 measuredYesRTX 5080 16GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.860.3 est.Yes160.8 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.860.3 est.Yes160.8 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.358.7 est.Yes156.6 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-25074.057.3 est.Yes152.7 est.YesRTX 5080 16GB

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 5080 16GB
Catalog models that fit18 of 6125 of 61
Largest exclusive fit—gpt-oss-20b (21.5B)

RTX 3060 12GB details → · RTX 5080 16GB details →