Family Mistral · 12B parameters★ Made in France

Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct

Co-developed with NVIDIA. 128k ctx, Tekken tokenizer, strong in European multilingual.

🇫🇷 Mistral AI·License Apache 2.0·Context 125k tokens·Output July 2024·Fits within the 128 GB of the GIGABYTE AI TOP ATOM← Catalog

01What it can do

Strengths
  • 128k context
  • Strong in European multilingual performance
  • Completely free Apache 2.0
  • Excellent 12B compromise
Limitations to know
  • —Worse than Small 3.1 at reasoning
  • —No vision
Architecture
Dense Transformer · GQA · Tekken tokenizer (131k vocabulary)
Training
Co-trained Mistral × NVIDIA. European multilingual corpus.
Ideal for
Multilingual chatLong contextOutils/agents

05Install

Install Ollama for your OS. Check the model and its quantization before downloading. Start with 4096 tokens of context, then check placement with ollama ps. A command below is not proof that a test was run on your machine.

$ollama run mistral-nemo:12b
⚠
First download: between 2 and 40 GB depending on the selected quantization. Plan for sufficient disk space; a stable connection is recommended. Subsequent launches are instant.

02Required memory

Approximate GPU VRAM required to run this model, including 4k tokens of context overhead. For a longer context, add ~1 GB per 8k-token increment.

Q4_K_M
The lightest, ~5% loss
7 GB
Q5_K_M
Good quality/size compromise
9 GB
Q8_0
Nearly indistinguishable from FP16
13 GB
FP16
Full precision — server use
24 GB
Fallback CPU · If you don't have a GPU, allow 16 GB of RAM minimum to run this model at reduced speed.

What hardware do you need for Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct?

To run Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct locally with Q4 quantization, you need about 7 GB of VRAM. An option to compare: RTX 5060 Ti 16GB (ASUS Prime) — leave some headroom for the system and context; check engine compatibility with the GPU.

Current offer: RTX 5060 Ti 16GB (ASUS Prime)
AmazonSee price →

Affiliate links — commission possible at no extra cost to you; independent recommendations. As an Amazon Associate, BestLLMfor earns from qualifying purchases.

On the go: Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct also runs on a RTX laptop PC (16 GB of VRAM) →

This model in your private ChatGPT, without the cloud

Your private ChatGPT, free, on your own machine in an hour — LM Studio, Ollama, Open WebUI, your documents, no cloud.

  • Lifetime online access
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03Expected speed

Tokens generated per second in Q4_K_M, 4k context. Beyond 20 t/s, reading is comfortable. Below 10 t/s, that's just for testing.

Entry-level
~8t/s
GTX 1650, RX 6600, MBA M2 8GB
Mid-range
~25t/s
RTX 4060, 4070, MBP M3 Pro
High-end
~70t/s
RTX 4090, M4 Max, Radeon 7900

04Public benchmarks

Scores reproduced from model cards or MMLU-Pro / community sources. Unit: % correct answers.

MMLU
68
HellaSwag
83.5
Winogrande
76.8