Compare · prices checked 2026-09-03
RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE: specs, price per hour, which to rent
NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB, $0.262/hr) against NVIDIA A100 PCIE (80 GB, $0.662/hr): public specs side by side, live fixed prices from our sheet, what fits in each card's VRAM, and a verdict written for real workloads — both are rentable right now.
RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE specifications
Public NVIDIA figures (dense, non-sparsity). The last column is RTX 4090 relative to A100 PCIE.
| Spec | RTX 4090 | A100 PCIE | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace (2022) | Ampere (2021) | — |
| VRAM | 24 GB GDDR6X | 80 GB HBM2e | −70% |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,008 GB/s | 1,935 GB/s | −48% |
| FP16 tensor (dense) | 330 TFLOPS | 312 TFLOPS | +6% |
| FP32 | 82.6 TFLOPS | 19.5 TFLOPS | +324% |
| CUDA cores | 16,384 | 6,912 | +137% |
| TDP | 450 W | 300 W | +50% |
| PCIe · NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | Gen 4.0 · no NVLink | — |
| PowerScore (RTX 3090 = 100) | 232 | 220 | +5% |
| Max GPUs per machine | 8× | 8× | — |
RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE price per hour
Fixed rates from our sheet — every on-demand price is the marketplace median × 0.70, rounded down. Monthly = 730 hours.
| Rate | RTX 4090 | A100 PCIE | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-demand, per GPU-hour | $0.262 | $0.662 | RTX 4090 (−60%) |
| Interruptible, per GPU-hour | $0.131 | $0.331 | RTX 4090 |
| Reserved (3 mo), per GPU-hour | $0.170 | $0.430 | RTX 4090 |
| On-demand, per month | $191 | $483 | RTX 4090 |
| Market median (reference) | $0.37 | $0.95 | — |
| $ per 1,000 FP16 TFLOP-hours | $0.79 | $2.12 | RTX 4090 (better value) |
| $ per GB of VRAM per hour | $0.0109 | $0.0083 | A100 PCIE (better value) |
Try a full month with storage and bandwidth in the GPU cost calculator.
What fits in VRAM: 24 GB vs 80 GB
| Workload | RTX 4090 | A100 PCIE |
|---|---|---|
| Largest LLM in FP16, one card | ~8B | ~32B |
| Largest LLM at 4-bit, one card | ~32B | ~123B |
| Flux dev (FP8, ~17 GB) | fits | fits |
| Wan 2.x 14B video (offloaded) | yes | yes |
| 70B 4-bit LLM on one card | no | yes |
Rules of thumb: ~2.4 GB per billion parameters in FP16 all-in, ~0.62 GB in 4-bit. Full tables in the VRAM guide.
Verdict: which should you rent?
The consumer RTX 4090 is faster per clock on FP16 and much cheaper per hour; the A100 PCIe has 80 GB of HBM2e, ECC and NVLink pairing. Under 24 GB the 4090 wins almost every job on cost; above it — 70B models, big batches — only the A100 fits.
- Cheaper per hour: RTX 4090 ($0.262 vs $0.662, −60%).
- More VRAM: A100 PCIE (80 GB vs 24 GB).
- More FP16 throughput: RTX 4090 (about 1.1×).
- Best value per TFLOP-hour: RTX 4090.
- Best value per GB of VRAM: A100 PCIE.
- Multi-GPU: RTX 4090 over PCIe · A100 PCIE over PCIe.
Related comparisons
- H100 PCIE vs A100 PCIE $2.147 vs $0.662 per hour Compare
- A100 SXM4 vs A100 PCIE $0.583 vs $0.662 per hour Compare
- RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090 $0.318 vs $0.262 per hour Compare
- RTX 4090 vs RTX 3090 $0.262 vs $0.104 per hour Compare
- RTX 4090 vs L40S $0.262 vs $0.466 per hour Compare
- L40S vs A100 PCIE $0.466 vs $0.662 per hour Compare
RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE: FAQ
Deeper reading: H100 vs H200 vs B200, RTX 4090 vs RTX 5090, how cloud GPU pricing works.
Is the RTX 4090 faster than the A100 PCIE?
On dense FP16 tensor throughput the RTX 4090 leads by about 1.1× (330 vs 312 TFLOPS). Memory bandwidth matters as much for inference: RTX 4090 1,008 GB/s vs A100 PCIE 1,935 GB/s.
Which is cheaper to rent, the RTX 4090 or the A100 PCIE?
The RTX 4090: $0.262/hr on-demand versus $0.662/hr — 60% less. Interruptible rates are $0.131 (RTX 4090) and $0.331 (A100 PCIE). Per TFLOP-hour the better value is the RTX 4090.
Which has more VRAM and what does that change?
The A100 PCIE has 80 GB versus 24 GB. In LLM terms that is roughly a 32B FP16 model (or ~123B in 4-bit) on one card against 8B FP16 (~32B 4-bit). If the model does not fit, speed is irrelevant.
Can I rent both on PowerGPU right now?
Yes — 439 × RTX 4090 and 55 × A100 PCIE are online as this page renders, deployable in about 30 seconds, billed per second, paid in crypto with no KYC.