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RTX 3060 12GB vs RX 9070 16GB for Local LLMs

The RX 9070 16GB has about 78% more memory bandwidth (640 vs 360 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 78% faster on the RX 9070 16GB. The RX 9070 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 RX 9070 16GB but not the RTX 3060 12GB: gpt-oss-20b (21.5B). MSRP is $329 for the RTX 3060 12GB vs $549 for the RX 9070 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 RX 9070 16GB posts the higher tok/s in 35 rows vs 5. Methodology.

Spec comparison

RTX 3060 12GBRX 9070 16GB
VendorNVIDIAAMD
VRAM12 GB16 GB
Memory typeGDDR6GDDR6
Memory bandwidth360 GB/s640 GB/s
TDP170 W220 W
MSRP (list)$329$549
BuyMSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC (affiliate) · More listingsSearch Amazon (affiliate)

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 fitsRX 9070 16GB tok/sRX 9070 16GB fitsWinner
Qwen3-0.6B0.8286.4 est.Yes509.1 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
gemma-3-1b-it1.0229.1 est.Yes407.3 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct1.2190.9 est.Yes339.4 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B30.593.0 est.No293.9 est.NoRX 9070 16GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct30.593.0 est.No293.9 est.NoRX 9070 16GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-250730.593.0 est.No293.9 est.NoRX 9070 16GB
GLM-4.7-Flash31.289.3 est.No282.1 est.NoRX 9070 16GB
Qwen3-1.7B2.0114.5 est.Yes203.6 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct3.2122.9 measuredYes127.3 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
gpt-oss-20b21.584.0 measuredNo113.1 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct3.860.3 est.Yes107.2 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning3.860.3 est.Yes107.2 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
gemma-3-4b-it4.358.7 est.Yes104.4 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-25074.057.3 est.Yes101.8 est.YesRX 9070 16GB
Qwen3-4B-Thinking-25074.057.3 est.Yes101.8 est.YesRX 9070 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 12GBRX 9070 16GB
Catalog models that fit18 of 6125 of 61
Largest exclusive fitgpt-oss-20b (21.5B)

RTX 3060 12GB details → · RX 9070 16GB details →