Can Ministral 3 3B run on GTX 1060 6GB?

YES — Tight Fit

A74Great

Estimated from fit model

Ministral 3 3B needs ~5.6 GB VRAM. GTX 1060 6GB has 6.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~42 tok/s.

Runtime: vLLMCapacity: TightBandwidth: Very lowStack: OptimizedBottleneck: Memory bandwidth

Operating mode

Choose the run profile you care about

Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.

Current mode

Balanced

Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.

Capabilities:

Select quantization to explore

Q4_K_M (Medium quality) — 5.6 GB, 42.0 tok/s, Tight fit

5.6 GB required6.0 GB available

93% VRAM used

Fit status

Tight fit

Decode

42.0 tok/s

TTFT

4610 ms

Safe context

26K

Memory

5.6 GB / 6.0 GB

Memory breakdown

Weights1.8 GB

KV Cache0.7 GB

Runtime2.4 GB

Headroom0.6 GB

See how fast it feels

See how fast it feelsMinistral 3 3B on GTX 1060 6GB
1st promptCold start — includes initialization
>What is local AI inference?
Local AI inference means running an AI language model directly on your own hardware — your laptop, desktop, or server — instead of sending requests to a remote cloud API.

When you run inference locally the model weights are loaded into your GPU or unified memory. Each token you generate requires reading those weights from memory, so memory bandwidth is the main bottleneck for decode speed.

Key benefits of running locally:
  - Full privacy: your prompts never leave your machine
  - No per-token cost or rate limits
  - Works offline once the model is downloaded
  - Latency depends only on your hardware
2nd promptWarm — model ready, no init overhead
>How much VRAM do I need?
It depends on the model size and quantization level. A rough rule of thumb:

  Model size     Q4 (4-bit)    Q8 (8-bit)    FP16
  7B params      ~4.3 GB       ~7.5 GB       ~14 GB
  13B params     ~7.9 GB       ~13.9 GB      ~26 GB
  70B params     ~42.7 GB      ~74.9 GB      ~140 GB

Most people use 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M) which gives 90-95% of full quality at a fraction of the memory. A 24 GB GPU can comfortably run most 7B-13B models.
Estimated: 42.0 tok/s decode · 4.6s TTFT (warm) · 105 tok/s prefill

What limits this setup

This setup is broadly balanced for this model.

Very little memory headroom

You can run the model, but there is not much room left for longer context, bigger batches, extra apps, or future model updates.

Older PCIe generation

PCIe 3.0 is workable, but it compounds the penalty when you offload heavily or try to scale across multiple cards.

Best improvement path

Buy headroom, not only minimum fit

A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.

Performance by workload

Workload	Grade	Fit	Decode	TTFT	Context
Chat	A	Tight fit	42.0 tok/s	2514 ms	26K
Coding	A	Tight fit	42.0 tok/s	4610 ms	26K
Agentic Coding	F	Too heavy	34.9 tok/s	8058 ms	26K
Reasoning	A	Tight fit	42.0 tok/s	5448 ms	26K
RAG	F	Too heavy	34.9 tok/s	10072 ms	26K

Quantization options

How Ministral 3 3B (3B params) fits at each quantization level on GTX 1060 6GB (6.0 GB usable).

Quant	Bits	VRAM	Quality	Fit
Q2_K	2	1.2 GB	Low	A76
Q3_K_S	3	1.5 GB	Low	A76
NVFP4	4

Get started

Copy-paste commands to run Ministral 3 3B on your machine.

Run

docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
  --hf-repo "mistralai/Ministral-3-3B-Instruct-2512" \
  --hf-file "Ministral-3-3B-Instruct-2512-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
  -c 4096 -ngl 99

Frequently asked questions

Can GTX 1060 6GB run Ministral 3 3B?

Yes, GTX 1060 6GB can run Ministral 3 3B with a A grade (Tight fit). Expected decode speed: 42.0 tok/s.

How much VRAM does Ministral 3 3B need?

Ministral 3 3B (3B parameters) requires approximately 5.6 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.

What is the best quantization for Ministral 3 3B?

The recommended quantization for Ministral 3 3B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.

What speed will Ministral 3 3B run at on GTX 1060 6GB?

On GTX 1060 6GB, Ministral 3 3B achieves approximately 42.0 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 4610ms using Q4_K_M quantization.

Can GTX 1060 6GB run Ministral 3 3B for coding?

For coding workloads, Ministral 3 3B on GTX 1060 6GB receives a A grade with 42.0 tok/s and 26K context.

What context window can Ministral 3 3B use on GTX 1060 6GB?

On GTX 1060 6GB, Ministral 3 3B can safely use up to 26K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 262K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.

What should I upgrade first if Ministral 3 3B feels slow on GTX 1060 6GB?

Buy headroom, not only minimum fit. A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.

See all results for GTX 1060 6GB See all hardware for Ministral 3 3B

Embed this result▼

Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.

<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/ministral-3-3b-on-gtx-1060-6gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>

Preview: