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RTX 3090 vs RTX 4090
Cloud rental price, compute per dollar and specs, side by side.
Open in the interactive comparer →
RTX 3090$0.13lowest on-demand per GPU·h
$1.76 per PFLOP·h · 2 providersRTX 4090$0.34lowest on-demand per GPU·h
$2.06 per PFLOP·h · 5 providersWhat actually differs
- The RTX 4090 has 2.3× more dense FP16/BF16 throughput than the RTX 3090 (0.071 PF vs 0.165 PF).
- The RTX 4090 has 1.1× more memory bandwidth than the RTX 3090 (936 vs 1,008 GB/s), which usually limits LLM token generation. Memory: 24 GB vs 24 GB.
- Only the RTX 4090 has native FP8 tensor cores.
- The RTX 3090 is 63% cheaper per hour than the RTX 4090 at the lowest on-demand prices ($0.13 vs $0.34).
- Per unit of compute, the RTX 3090 is the better deal: $1.76 vs $2.06 per PFLOP-hour of dense FP16/BF16.
| Spec / price | RTX 3090 | RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | 24 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory bandwidth | 936 GB/s | 1,008 GB/sbetter |
| FP16 / BF16 (dense) | 0.071 PF | 0.165 PFbetter |
| FP8 (dense) | — | 0.33 PF |
| FP4 (dense) | — | — |
| INT8 (dense) | 0.284 PF | 0.661 PFbetter |
| TF32 (dense) | 0.0356 PF | 0.0826 PFbetter |
| FP32 (dense) | 0.0356 PF | 0.0826 PFbetter |
| FP64 (dense) | 0.0006 PF | 0.0013 PFbetter |
| Power | 350 W | 450 W |
| Architecture | Ampere (2020) | Ada Lovelace (2022) |
| Lowest on-demand | $0.13better | $0.34 |
| Median on-demand | $0.17better | $0.40 |
| Lowest spot | — | — |
| FP16/BF16 $ per PFLOP·h | $1.76better | $2.06 |
| Providers | 2 | 5 |
RTX 3090 vs RTX 4090: questions
Is the RTX 3090 faster than the RTX 4090?
The RTX 4090 has 2.3× more dense FP16/BF16 compute than the RTX 3090. The RTX 4090 has 1.1× more memory bandwidth than the RTX 3090. Real-world speedups depend on the workload: training and prefill scale with compute, while LLM decoding scales mostly with memory bandwidth.
Which is cheaper per FLOP, the RTX 3090 or the RTX 4090?
Right now the RTX 3090 is cheaper per unit of compute: $1.76 vs $2.06 per PFLOP-hour at the lowest on-demand prices.
How much does it cost to rent an RTX 3090 vs an RTX 4090 for a month?
Running one GPU around the clock at the lowest on-demand price costs about $91 per month for the RTX 3090 and $248 for the RTX 4090.
Which has more memory, the RTX 3090 or the RTX 4090?
Both have 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 4090 has more bandwidth.