Hardware guide / 16 GB VRAM

What LLM can an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB run?

Q: What LLM can an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB run?

With a 10 percent usable-memory reserve and 20 percent inference headroom, the generic one-card weight floor reaches a 20B INT4, 8B INT8, or 3B FP16 tier. Named models still need exact checkpoint, context, KV-cache, and runtime checks.

Q: Can an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB run Qwen3 14B?

The one-sequence 32K INT4 profile on this page reaches 14.27 GiB, leaving only about 0.13 GiB below the 14.4 GiB usable-memory budget. That is a paper fit, not comfortable runtime margin.

Q: Can an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB run gpt-oss-20b?

The short 4K planning profile reaches 14.29 GiB and clears this budget by about 0.11 GiB, which is too narrow to promise. Longer context or different runtime allocations can move it beyond one-card capacity.

Q: How do I tell the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB from the 8GB version?

NVIDIA lists the RTX 4060 Ti with either 16GB or 8GB of GDDR6. Verify the installed memory in the NVIDIA app, operating-system GPU panel, or a hardware-information utility before using this 16GB capacity plan.

Confirm the variant first. The 16GB card opens a 14B INT4 lane, but Qwen3 14B at 32K and gpt-oss-20b at 4K land within 0.13 GiB of this planning ceiling.

Open the 16 GB model finder →

Fast answer

The generic weight-only floor

INT4
20B listed tier · 25.77B arithmetic ceiling

INT8
8B listed tier · 12.88B arithmetic ceiling

FP16 / BF16
3B listed tier · 6.44B arithmetic ceiling

Default reserve
16 × 0.90 ÷ 1.20 = 12 GiB for weights

Editable evidence

Where the 16GB variant changes the answer

Every scenario opens with the model architecture, context, reserve, and headroom already filled in. The green edge cases are planning fits, not deployment promises.

Qwen3 8B · INT4 · 32K9.98 GiBFits with about 4.42 GiB margin → Qwen3 14B · INT4 · 32K14.27 GiBPaper fit with only 0.13 GiB margin → gpt-oss-20b · MXFP4 · 4K14.29 GiBPaper fit with only 0.11 GiB margin → Qwen3 8B · INT8 · 32K14.56 GiBNarrowly exceeds the 14.4 GiB budget → Qwen3 32B · INT4 · 32K27.93 GiBRequires a larger VRAM tier → RTX 4060 8GB comparison7.2 GiBSee the context-limited 8B lane →

Variant check

The “Ti” name is not enough: verify 16GB.

NVIDIA lists the RTX 4060 Ti with 16GB or 8GB GDDR6. This table applies only to the 16GB variant and reserves ten percent of that memory.

Profile	Planning target	16GB result
Qwen3 8B INT4 · 32K	9.98 GiB	Fits with useful margin
Qwen3 14B INT4 · 32K	14.27 GiB	Paper fit, 0.13 GiB margin
gpt-oss-20b · 4K	14.29 GiB	Paper fit, 0.11 GiB margin
Qwen3 8B INT8 · 32K	14.56 GiB	Narrow paper miss

Capacity is only gate one

Verify the installed memory.
The 8GB and 16GB RTX 4060 Ti variants have very different local-LLM ceilings.

A 0.1 GiB margin is not comfortable.
Artifact packaging, allocator behavior, and runtime workspace can erase it.

VRAM does not predict speed.
This guide estimates capacity; benchmark the exact runtime, workload, context, and batch size.

Primary sources

Inputs you can inspect.

NVIDIA documents 16GB and 8GB RTX 4060 Ti variants. This guide is specifically for the 16GB GDDR6 card. Model profiles reuse the primary-source inputs documented in the Qwen3 and gpt-oss worksheets.

Official NVIDIA RTX 4060 family specifications → Open the Qwen3 GPU worksheet → Open the gpt-oss hardware worksheet →