Home / Can I run it? / Mistral Small 24B / Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 3060 12GB

No. Mistral Small 24B at Q4_K_M needs about 17.7 GB, and the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB has 12.0 GB usable at a ~4k context.

Can I run Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 3060 12GB?

Mistral Small 24B at Q4_K_M needs about 17.7 GB, and the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB has 12.0 GB usable. That figure is 12 GB of VRAM on the spec sheet, of which 12.0 GB is usable for weights and cache, at 360 GB/s memory bandwidth. Mistral’s 24B Small instruct model, a dense mid-size alternative to the 27B–32B class. These are estimates from our formula, not measured benchmarks.

Quant that fits

None of Q4, Q8 or FP16 needs 17.7 GB

Memory needed

17.7 GB at Q4_K_M, ~4k context

Usable VRAM

12.0 GB of 12 GB VRAM

Est. tokens/sec

n/a does not fit

Mistral-Small-3.2-24B-Instruct-2506 · GeForce RTX 3060 12GB · Everything this machine runs · Q4 vs Q8 vs FP16

Memory at each quant

Estimated tokens per second

No speed estimate: Mistral Small 24B does not fit in the 12.0 GB this machine can use, so we do not publish a tokens/sec figure for CPU offload.

Context headroom

Even at a short ~4k context, the weights do not fit. Extending context would only increase the gap.

From the model’s config. Try other sizes in the VRAM calculator or see the context length guide.

What to do instead

• Run R1 Distill 14B instead (11.3 GB at Q4). It is a different model, not a drop-in, but it does fit this machine.
• To hold Mistral Small 24B at Q4, you need about 17.7 GB. The Mac mini M6 24GB has 18.0 GB usable ($1299 Apple list price, M6 12C CPU/12C GPU, 24GB/512GB (MHQM4LL/A)).
• CPU offload can load the weights anyway, but it is slow. We do not publish an offload tokens/sec figure.
• Full hardware list: Mistral-Small-3.2-24B-Instruct-2506. Specs for this machine: GeForce RTX 3060 12GB.

Other hardware for Mistral Small 24B

• Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
• Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 3080Won’t fit
• Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 3090Fits
• Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 4060 Ti 16GBWon’t fit
• Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 4070 Ti SuperWon’t fit
• Mistral Small 24B on an RTX 4090Fits

Other models on an RTX 3060 12GB

• Qwen3-32B on an RTX 3060 12GBWon’t fit
• Qwen3-30B-A3B on an RTX 3060 12GBWon’t fit
• Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 3060 12GBWon’t fit
• Gemma 3 27B on an RTX 3060 12GBWon’t fit
• Gemma 4 31B on an RTX 3060 12GBWon’t fit
• gpt-oss-20b on an RTX 3060 12GBWon’t fit