---
title: "RTX 5090 vs A100 SXM4: Specs & Price per Hour (2026) | PowerGPU"
description: "RTX 5090 vs A100 SXM4: 32 vs 80 GB VRAM, 419 vs 312 FP16 TFLOPS, $0.439 vs $0.560/hr on PowerGPU. Specs side by side, live rental prices, which to rent."
url: https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-5090-vs-a100-sxm4
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 5090 vs A100 SXM4: specs, price per hour, which to rent

NVIDIA RTX 5090 (32 GB, **$0.439** /hr) against NVIDIA A100 SXM4 (80 GB, **$0.560** /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 5090 Blackwell · 32 GB GDDR7 · 419 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.439/hr on-demand · $0.219/hr interruptible · 922 online](https://powergpu.ai/gpu/rtx-5090)
- [NVIDIA A100 SXM4 Ampere · 80 GB HBM2e · 312 FP16 TFLOPS · $0.560/hr on-demand · $0.280/hr interruptible · 95 online](https://powergpu.ai/gpu/a100-sxm4)

## RTX 5090 vs A100 SXM4 specifications

Public NVIDIA figures (dense, non-sparsity). The last column is RTX 5090 relative to A100 SXM4.

| Spec | RTX 5090 | A100 SXM4 | Difference |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Architecture | Blackwell (2025) | Ampere (2020) | — |
| VRAM | 32 GB GDDR7 | 80 GB HBM2e | −60% |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,792 GB/s | 2,039 GB/s | −12% |
| FP16 tensor (dense) | 419 TFLOPS | 312 TFLOPS | +34% |
| FP32 | 104.8 TFLOPS | 19.5 TFLOPS | +437% |
| CUDA cores | 21,760 | 6,912 | +215% |
| TDP | 575 W | 400 W | +44% |
| PCIe · NVLink | Gen 5.0 · no NVLink | Gen 4.0 · NVLink | — |
| PowerScore (RTX 3090 = 100) | 295 | 220 | +34% |
| Max GPUs per machine | 8× | 8× | — |

## RTX 5090 vs A100 SXM4 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 5090 | A100 SXM4 | Cheaper |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| On-demand, per GPU-hour | $0.439 | $0.560 | RTX 5090 (−22%) |
| Interruptible, per GPU-hour | $0.219 | $0.280 | RTX 5090 |
| Reserved (3 mo), per GPU-hour | $0.285 | $0.364 | RTX 5090 |
| On-demand, per month | $320 | $409 | RTX 5090 |
| Market median (reference) | $0.63 | $0.80 | — |
| $ per 1,000 FP16 TFLOP-hours | $1.05 | $1.79 | RTX 5090 (better value) |
| $ per GB of VRAM per hour | $0.0137 | $0.0070 | A100 SXM4 (better value) |

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

## What fits in VRAM: 32 GB vs 80 GB

| Workload | RTX 5090 | A100 SXM4 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Largest LLM in FP16, one card | ~13B | ~32B |
| Largest LLM at 4-bit, one card | ~49B | ~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 RTX 5090 beats the A100 SXM4 on raw FP16/FP4 throughput and bandwidth at a lower hourly rate; the A100 has 80 GB of HBM2e, NVLink and FP64. Under 32 GB the 5090 is the better rental; for multi-GPU training and 70B models, the A100.

- **Cheaper per hour:** RTX 5090 ($0.439 vs $0.560, −22%).
- **More VRAM:** A100 SXM4 (80 GB vs 32 GB).
- **More FP16 throughput:** RTX 5090 (about 1.3×).
- **Best value per TFLOP-hour:** RTX 5090.
- **Best value per GB of VRAM:** A100 SXM4.
- **Multi-GPU:** RTX 5090 over PCIe · A100 SXM4 with NVLink.

## Related comparisons

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

- [H100 SXM vs A100 SXM4 $1.428 vs $0.560 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/h100-sxm-vs-a100-sxm4)
- [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 5090 vs L40S $0.439 vs $0.514 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-5090-vs-l40s)
- [RTX PRO 6000 WS vs RTX 5090 $1.040 vs $0.439 per hour](https://powergpu.ai/compare/rtx-pro-6000-ws-vs-rtx-5090)

## RTX 5090 vs A100 SXM4: 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 5090 faster than the A100 SXM4?**

On dense FP16 tensor throughput the RTX 5090 leads by about 1.3× (419 vs 312 TFLOPS). Memory bandwidth matters as much for inference: RTX 5090 1,792 GB/s vs A100 SXM4 2,039 GB/s.

**Which is cheaper to rent, the RTX 5090 or the A100 SXM4?**

The RTX 5090: $0.439/hr on-demand versus $0.560/hr — 22% less. Interruptible rates are $0.219 (RTX 5090) and $0.280 (A100 SXM4). Per TFLOP-hour the better value is the RTX 5090.

**Which has more VRAM and what does that change?**

The A100 SXM4 has 80 GB versus 32 GB. In LLM terms that is roughly a 32B FP16 model (or ~123B in 4-bit) on one card against 13B FP16 (~49B 4-bit). If the model does not fit, speed is irrelevant.

**Can I rent both on PowerGPU right now?**

Yes — 922 × RTX 5090 and 95 × A100 SXM4 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-5090-vs-a100-sxm4 · Site index for AI assistants: https://powergpu.ai/llms.txt · Full content: https://powergpu.ai/llms-full.txt