Pixtral 12B needs ~9.1 GB VRAM. RTX 3070 Ti 8GB has 8.0 GB. With Q2_K quantization, expect ~49 tok/s.
Operating mode
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.
Select quantization to explore
3.8 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Too heavy
Decode
21.4 tok/s
TTFT
9037 ms
Safe context
4K
Memory
11.8 GB / 8.0 GB
Offload
30%
It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.
CPU or host-memory offload is active
About 10% of the working set spills out of accelerator memory, which usually hurts latency and sustained decode throughput.
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.
Remove offload with more accelerator memory
Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.
Buy headroom, not only minimum fit
A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.
Increase host RAM if you keep offloading
This setup may need roughly 0.6 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | F | Too heavy | 27.0 tok/s | 3914 ms | 4K |
| Coding | F | Too heavy | 21.4 tok/s | 9037 ms | 4K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 14.4 tok/s | 19552 ms | 4K |
| Reasoning | F | Too heavy | 21.4 tok/s | 10680 ms | 4K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 14.4 tok/s | 24439 ms | 4K |
How Pixtral 12B (12B params) fits at each quantization level on RTX 3070 Ti 8GB (8.0 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_KBest for your GPU | 2 | 4.7 GB | Low | A77 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 5.9 GB | Low | F0 |
Copy-paste commands to run Pixtral 12B on your machine.
Run
ollama run pixtralUpgrade options
RTX 3060 12GBBudget pickMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$329 MSRP
RTX 5060 Ti 16GBBest valueMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$449 MSRP
RTX 4060 Ti 16GBNVIDIA upgradeMakes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$499 MSRP
Yes, RTX 3070 Ti 8GB can run Pixtral 12B at Q2_K quantization (Very compromised (needs ~0.6 GB host RAM)). The recommended Q4_K_M requires 11.8 GB which exceeds available memory, but at Q2_K it needs only 9.1 GB. Expected decode speed: 48.6 tok/s.
Pixtral 12B (12B parameters) requires approximately 11.8 GB at Q4_K_M quantization. On RTX 3070 Ti 8GB, it fits at Q2_K using 9.1 GB.
The recommended quantization is Q4_K_M, but on RTX 3070 Ti 8GB the best fitting quantization is Q2_K, which uses 9.1 GB.
On RTX 3070 Ti 8GB, Pixtral 12B achieves approximately 48.6 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 3981ms using Q2_K quantization.
For coding workloads, Pixtral 12B on RTX 3070 Ti 8GB receives a F grade with 21.4 tok/s and 4K context.
On RTX 3070 Ti 8GB, Pixtral 12B can safely use up to 9K tokens of context at Q2_K quantization. The model's official context limit is 131K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/pixtral-12b-on-rtx-3070-ti-8gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
| 4 |
6.7 GB |
| Medium |
| F0 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 7.3 GB | Medium | F0 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 8.6 GB | High | F0 |
Q6_K | 6 | 9.8 GB | High | F0 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 12.8 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 24.6 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Remove offload with more accelerator memory. Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.