The best local LLMs for the RTX A6000

Qwen3.8 27B (27B) fits comfortably in the RTX A6000's memory at Q8_0, using about 32GB with 8K context and generating ~18 tokens/sec. It is the most capable model in our catalog that runs well on this card. It is also our top pick for coding, reasoning and working with images.

Qwen3.8 27B, released in August 2026, is one of the strongest open models that fits a single 24GB GPU, with image input, a 262K native context, and switchable thinking. It uses the same hybrid layout as the Qwen3.5 and 3.6 27B models, where three of every four layers use linear attention, so long contexts cost far less memory than on older dense models. At Q4_K_M it needs about 18GB with 8K context, leaving room for 64K or more of context on a 24GB card, and 32GB cards can run Q6_K. It supersedes Qwen3.6 27B and Qwen3 32B, but its long reasoning traces make speed on slower hardware a real consideration.

Qwen3.6 35B-A3B (35B (3B active)) fits comfortably in the RTX A6000's memory at Q8_0, using about 41GB with 8K context and generating ~79 tokens/sec. It is the next-best model that runs well here, and the one to try if the top pick doesn't suit you. It is also the largest model that runs fully on this GPU.

Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is the April 2026 refresh of Qwen's fast mixture-of-experts model, focused on agentic coding and on preserving its reasoning across multi-turn tool use. With only 3B active parameters it generates text very quickly, and its hybrid linear attention keeps the KV cache tiny: the full 262K context needs about 5GB. At Q4_K_M it needs about 24GB with 8K context, which is tight on a 24GB card and comfortable on 32GB GPUs and Macs with 36GB or more; 12GB to 16GB GPUs run it well with experts offloaded to system RAM. It replaces Qwen3 30B-A3B and Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B for most local users.

gpt-oss-20b (20.9B (3.6B active)) fits comfortably in the RTX A6000's memory at MXFP4, using about 15GB with 8K context and generating ~105 tokens/sec. Pick it when responsiveness matters more than squeezing out maximum quality.

gpt-oss-20b is OpenAI's small open-weight reasoning model, a 21B mixture-of-experts with 3.6B active parameters whose expert weights ship natively in 4-bit MXFP4. OpenAI has not released a successor, and it remains one of the best reasoning and tool-calling models that fits a 16GB GPU. The native weights take about 14GB, so 16GB cards and Macs with 24GB or more run it fully in memory, and 12GB cards run it with a little CPU offload. Reasoning effort is adjustable (low, medium, high) but cannot be turned off.