---
title: "RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE: Specs & Price per Hour (2026) | PowerGPU"
description: "RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE: 24 vs 80 GB VRAM, 330 vs 312 FP16 TFLOPS, $0.327 vs $0.374/hr on PowerGPU. Specs side by side, live rental prices, which to rent."
url: https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-4090-vs-a100-pcie
last_modified: 2026-09-14T11:04:20+00:00
prices_as_of: 2026-09-14
site: PowerGPU (powergpu.ai)
---

Compare · prices checked 2026-09-14

# RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE: specs, price per hour, which to rent

NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB, **$0.327** /hr) against NVIDIA A100 PCIE (80 GB, **$0.374** /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.

- [NVIDIA RTX 4090 Ada Lovelace · 24 GB GDDR6X · 330 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.327/hr on-demand · $0.163/hr interruptible · 461 online](https://powergpu.ai/gpu/rtx-4090)
- [NVIDIA A100 PCIE Ampere · 80 GB HBM2e · 312 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.374/hr on-demand · $0.187/hr interruptible · 46 online](https://powergpu.ai/gpu/a100-pcie)

## 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 | $0.327 | $0.374 | RTX 4090 (−13%) |
| Interruptible, per GPU-hour | $0.163 | $0.187 | RTX 4090 |
| Reserved (3 mo), per GPU-hour | $0.212 | $0.243 | RTX 4090 |
| On-demand, per month | $239 | $273 | RTX 4090 |
| Market median (reference) | $0.47 | $0.54 | — |
| $ per 1,000 FP16 TFLOP-hours | $0.99 | $1.20 | RTX 4090 (better value) |
| $ per GB of VRAM per hour | $0.0136 | $0.0047 | A100 PCIE (better value) |

Try a full month with storage and bandwidth in the [GPU cost calculator](https://powergpu.ai/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](https://powergpu.ai/guides/llm-vram-requirements).

## 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 ($0.327 vs $0.374, −13%).
- **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

[All comparisons](https://powergpu.ai/compare)

- [H100 PCIE vs A100 PCIE $1.867 vs $0.374 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/h100-pcie-vs-a100-pcie)
- [A100 SXM4 vs A100 PCIE $0.560 vs $0.374 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/a100-sxm4-vs-a100-pcie)
- [RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090 $0.439 vs $0.327 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-5090-vs-rtx-4090)
- [RTX 4090 vs RTX 3090 $0.327 vs $0.108 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-4090-vs-rtx-3090)
- [RTX 4090 vs L40S $0.327 vs $0.514 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-4090-vs-l40s)
- [L40S vs A100 PCIE $0.514 vs $0.374 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/l40s-vs-a100-pcie)

## RTX 4090 vs A100 PCIE: FAQ

Deeper reading: [H100 vs H200 vs B200](https://powergpu.ai/guides/h100-vs-h200-vs-b200), [RTX 4090 vs RTX 5090](https://powergpu.ai/guides/rtx-4090-vs-rtx-5090), [how cloud GPU pricing works](https://powergpu.ai/guides/cloud-gpu-pricing-explained).

**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: $0.327/hr on-demand versus $0.374/hr — 13% less. Interruptible rates are $0.163 (RTX 4090) and $0.187 (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 — 461 × RTX 4090 and 46 × A100 PCIE are online as this page renders, deployable in about 30 seconds, billed per second, paid in crypto with no KYC.

---

*About PowerGPU:* PowerGPU (powergpu.ai) is a cloud GPU rental service offering 80 NVIDIA GPU models — from the RTX A2000 at $0.024/hr to the B300 — at fixed prices set at least 30% below the public GPU marketplace median and re-checked weekly (H100 SXM: $1.428/hr on-demand). Billing is per second with no minimums; payment is crypto only (USDT, BTC, XMR, ETH, SOL, LTC, TRX) with no KYC. Instances run in Tier-III datacenters across 32 regions with a 99.9% uptime SLA and deploy in about 30 seconds from the web console (cloud.powergpu.ai) or the REST API.

Source: https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-4090-vs-a100-pcie · Site index for AI assistants: https://powergpu.ai/llms.txt · Full content: https://powergpu.ai/llms-full.txt