12GB VRAM

Arc B580 12G — what LLMs can it run?

48 of 89 indexed models fit comfortably in 12GB at 4K context, each at the highest-quality quant that still leaves headroom.

The short answer for Arc B580 12G

12 GB, 456 GB/s GDDR6. 48 of 89 models in this index fit comfortably at 4K context; 49 load at all.

Biggest that fits
DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct — 10.1 GB at Q4_K_M — 1.9 GB spare at 4K, so longer context comes out of a thin margin.
Room to grow
Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct — 5.5 GB at Q4_K_M — under 60% of the card, which leaves 6.5 GB for a long context window or a second process.
Speed ceiling
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct at Q4_K_M reads 4.6 GB of weights per token, so 456 GB/s puts a hard ceiling near 99 tok/s. That is arithmetic on two published numbers, not a benchmark — real throughput lands below it. No run on this card has been measured here, so there is nothing to compare the ceiling against.
The wall you will hit
Backend coverage, not capacity. At 456 GB/s the card has the memory system for its size class; what limits it is which runtimes reach it. llama.cpp's SYCL backend lists Arc A-series and B580 cards as verified, and Ollama runs them through Vulkan — so GGUF is the format this site recommends here. AWQ, GPTQ and EXL2 are not.
Best local LLM for 12GB

14B · 15

Arc B580 12G — what LLMs can it run? — 14B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s on RTX 4090
DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct16B-A2.4BQ4_K_M10.08 GB+1.9 GB145Estimated
DeepSeek-V2-Lite Chat16B-A2.4BQ4_K_M10.08 GB+1.9 GB142Estimated
StarCoder2 15B15BQ4_K_M10.19 GB+1.8 GB92Estimated
Qwen3 14B Instruct14BQ4_K_M10.04 GB+2 GB88
Qwen2.5 14B Instruct14BQ4_K_M10.14 GB+1.9 GB98Estimated
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B14BQ4_K_M10.14 GB+1.9 GB95
Phi-4 14B14BQ4_K_M10.17 GB+1.8 GB88Community
Phi-3 Medium 14B Instruct14BQ4_K_M9.73 GB+2.3 GB102Estimated
Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct12BQ4_K_M8.42 GB+3.6 GB112Estimated
Gemma 3 12B IT12BQ5_K_M9.84 GB+2.2 GB92Estimated
Stable LM 2 12B Chat12BQ4_K_M8.35 GB+3.7 GB108Estimated
Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct11BQ4_K_M7.66 GB+4.3 GB88Estimated
Solar 10.7B Instruct11BQ4_K_M7.6 GB+4.4 GB125Estimated
Falcon 3 10B Instruct10BQ4_K_M7.28 GB+4.7 GB118Estimated
Gemma 2 9B Instruct9BQ4_K_M7.3 GB+4.7 GB132Estimated

7B · 22

Arc B580 12G — what LLMs can it run? — 7B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s on RTX 4090
GLM-4-9B-Chat9BQ8_010.16 GB+1.8 GB105Estimated
Qwen3-VL 8B Instruct8BQ8_010.39 GB+1.6 GB108Estimated
Ministral 3 8B Instruct8BQ8_010.02 GB+2 GB—
Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct7BQ4_K_M5.49 GB+6.5 GB72Estimated
Granite 3.1 8B Instruct8BQ4_K_M5.88 GB+6.1 GB142Estimated
Qwen3 8B Instruct8BQ6_K7.64 GB+4.4 GB122
Llama 3.1 8B Instruct8BQ8_09.47 GB+2.5 GB118
Nous Hermes 3 Llama 3.1 8B8BQ4_K_M5.64 GB+6.4 GB148Estimated
Aya 23 8B8BQ4_K_M5.64 GB+6.4 GB145Estimated
OpenChat 3.6 8B8BQ4_K_M5.64 GB+6.4 GB146Estimated
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B8BQ5_K_M6.51 GB+5.5 GB128Estimated
InternLM2 7B Chat7BQ4_K_M5.45 GB+6.6 GB148Estimated
Qwen2.5 7B Instruct7BQ6_K6.77 GB+5.2 GB132
Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct7BQ4_K_M5.07 GB+6.9 GB158Estimated
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B7BQ4_K_M5.07 GB+6.9 GB152Estimated
Gemma 4 E4B ITE4BQ8_08.46 GB+3.5 GB—
OLMo 2 7B Instruct7BQ8_010.3 GB+1.7 GB125Estimated
WizardLM-2 7B7BQ4_K_M5.14 GB+6.9 GB152Estimated
Mistral 7B Instruct v0.37BQ6_K6.75 GB+5.3 GB135Estimated
Zephyr 7B Beta7BQ6_K6.75 GB+5.3 GB132Estimated
Gemma 4 E2B ITE2BQ8_05.2 GB+6.8 GB—
Gemma 3 4B IT4BQ8_05.05 GB+7 GB145Estimated

≤3B · 11

Arc B580 12G — what LLMs can it run? — ≤3B
ModelQuantEst. VRAMHeadroomtok/s on RTX 4090
Qwen3 4B Instruct4BQ6_K4.05 GB+8 GB145
Phi-4 Mini Instruct3.8BQ8_04.81 GB+7.2 GB262Estimated
Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct3.8BQ8_05.89 GB+6.1 GB255Estimated
Llama 3.2 3B Instruct3BQ8_04.05 GB+8 GB285Estimated
Qwen2.5 3B Instruct3BQ8_03.59 GB+8.4 GB290Estimated
SmolLM3 3B3BQ8_03.73 GB+8.3 GB—
Gemma 2 2B Instruct2BQ8_03.34 GB+8.7 GB320Estimated
Qwen3 1.7B Instruct1.7BQ8_02.39 GB+9.6 GB240Estimated
Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct1.5BQ8_01.83 GB+10.2 GB410Estimated
Llama 3.2 1B Instruct1BQ8_01.51 GB+10.5 GB450Estimated
Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct0.5BQ8_00.6 GB+11.4 GB540Estimated

How this list is built

Each row is the lowest-perplexity-loss quant of that model whose estimated total — weights plus KV cache at 4K context plus activation buffer — uses at most 88% of the card. That is the calculator's "green" threshold, so every row here has real headroom rather than only just fitting. Raise the context length and the list shortens; the calculator lets you check any combination directly.

A further 1 models load but with no headroom to spare (up to 105% of VRAM) — the Quant Hub’s GPU chips count those too, which is why its number is higher.

Measured on this card

No benchmark runs in this index were recorded on a Arc B580 12G. Every figure on this page is calculated from the model architecture and the quant level — treat them as estimates, not measurements. The speed column in the tables above is an RTX 4090 figure shown for reference — it is not a speed on this card.

Stepping up

A Arc A770 16G (16GB) fits 3 more of the indexed models than this card. Arc A770 16G →

Common questions

What is the best local LLM for an Arc B580 12G?

For everyday use, Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct at Q4_K_M — about 5.5 GB of the card's 12 GB at 4K context, leaving 6.5 GB for a longer window. If you want the largest thing that will load, that is DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct at Q4_K_M (10.1 GB, 1.9 GB spare). "Best" here means best fit for the memory budget — this index does not run task benchmarks, so it cannot tell you which model is smarter.

Can an Arc B580 12G run InternLM2 20B Chat?

No. Its smallest build here, Q4_K_M, needs about 13.4 GB and this card has 12.0 GB usable — short by 1.4 GB before any context beyond 4K. The largest model this card does clear is DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct.

How many tokens per second does an Arc B580 12G do on an 8B model at Q4?

This index has no measured run on this card, so it does not publish a figure. What can be stated from specifications: generating a token requires reading every weight once, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct at Q4_K_M is 4.6 GB of weights, and this card moves 456 GB/s — a ceiling near 99 tok/s. Batch size, context length, the runtime and how much of the model sits in cache all take you below it.

Arc B580 12G or RTX 3080 Ti for local LLMs?

They hold the same models: 12 GB against 12 GB fits 48 and 48 of 89 respectively at 4K. The difference is throughput — 456 GB/s against 912 GB/s, a 2.0× gap in how fast the weights can be read, which is what token generation is bound by. The RTX 3080 Ti generates faster on any model both can hold.

48 of 89 indexed models fit comfortably in 12GB at 4K context, each at the highest-quality quant that still leaves headroom.

This page's figures change when the model or the runtime does.Last updated 2026-10-03 RSS → /feed.xml