A100 vs RTX 3060 Ti: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3060 Ti when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The A100 has 80 GB of VRAM; the RTX 3060 Ti has 8 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. A100 from $0.991/GPU/hr; RTX 3060 Ti from $0.162/GPU/hr. The RTX 3060 Ti is 84% cheaper at the entry rate.
A100
Good for training and inference on models that don't need FP8 kernels
RTX 3060 Ti
Good for inference and small-scale training workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-10 22:02:14 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | A100 | RTX 3060 Ti |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 80 GB | 8 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 2,039 GB/s | 448 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ampere |
| Compute capability | 8.0 | 8.6 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | 312 TFLOPS | – |
| NVLink / multi-GPU interconnect | NVLink 3, 600 GB/s | – |
| Max board power (TDP) | 400W (SXM) | 200W |
| Form factor | SXM4 | PCIe |
| Regions | 6 | 2 |
On-demand price
| Rate | A100 | RTX 3060 Ti |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $1.49/GPU/hr | $0.162/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) |
Which is better for AI: A100 or RTX 3060 Ti?
Choose the A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3060 Ti when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
A100 vs RTX 3060 Ti: common questions
Is the A100 or the RTX 3060 Ti better for AI?
Short answer: choose the A100 when 80 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3060 Ti when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the A100 or the RTX 3060 Ti cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the A100 starts at $0.991/GPU/hr (median $1.97/GPU/hr) and the RTX 3060 Ti starts at $0.162/GPU/hr (median $0.215/GPU/hr). The RTX 3060 Ti is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 84%.
What is the difference between the A100 and the RTX 3060 Ti?
The A100 has 80 GB of VRAM against the RTX 3060 Ti's 8 GB; both are Ampere parts; both run BF16, INT4 workloads in hardware. On price, the A100 lists from $0.991/GPU/hr and the RTX 3060 Ti from $0.162/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the A100 and the RTX 3060 Ti?
The A100 is listed in 6 regions and the RTX 3060 Ti in 2 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the A100 vs the RTX 3060 Ti?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $991 on the A100 and $162 on the RTX 3060 Ti, a difference of $830 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the A100 have compared to the RTX 3060 Ti?
The A100 has 80 GB of VRAM; the RTX 3060 Ti has 8 GB.
Does the A100 or the RTX 3060 Ti support NVLink?
The A100 supports NVLink 3, 600 GB/s; the RTX 3060 Ti has no dedicated GPU-to-GPU interconnect.
How this comparison is calculated
Every price is normalized to a per-GPU hourly rate using the same pipeline as every other pricing surface on Aquanode, and only the cheapest qualifying offer per provider is shown. A dash means that provider does not currently list that GPU.
Architecture, compute capability and supported precisions come from each vendor's published datasheet for that generation, not from the marketplace feed. This page regenerates at most once per hour.
Memory bandwidth, tensor TFLOPS, NVLink/interconnect and max board power are the same verified-from-datasheet figures shown on each model's own A100 page and RTX 3060 Ti page, which link the primary vendor source for that model. A dash here means Aquanode hasn't verified that figure from a primary source yet, never a guess.
Go further
Check what fits in each card's memory with the A100 VRAM calculator and the RTX 3060 Ti VRAM calculator, see vendor-published throughput in the GPU benchmarks and specs table, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More A100 comparisons
More RTX 3060 Ti comparisons
Related reading: A100 pricing and specs, A100 vs H100, A100 vs V100, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
