P4 vs RTX 3060: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX 3060 when 12 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P4 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The P4 has 8 GB of VRAM; the RTX 3060 has 12 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. P4 from $0.069/GPU/hr; RTX 3060 from $0.110/GPU/hr. The P4 is 37% cheaper at the entry rate.
P4
Good for inference workloads on older-generation hardware
RTX 3060
Good for inference and small-scale training workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-10 22:01:25 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | P4 | RTX 3060 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 8 GB | 12 GB |
| Architecture | Pascal | Ampere |
| Compute capability | 6.1 | 8.6 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16 | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 |
| Form factor | PCIe | PCIe 4.0 x8 |
| Regions | 1 | 2 |
On-demand price
| Rate | P4 | RTX 3060 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.069/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.231/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: P4 or RTX 3060?
Choose the RTX 3060 when 12 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P4 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
P4 vs RTX 3060: common questions
Is the P4 or the RTX 3060 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX 3060 when 12 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P4 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the P4 or the RTX 3060 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the P4 starts at $0.069/GPU/hr (median $0.069/GPU/hr) and the RTX 3060 starts at $0.110/GPU/hr (median $0.231/GPU/hr). The P4 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 37%.
What is the difference between the P4 and the RTX 3060?
The P4 has 8 GB of VRAM against the RTX 3060's 12 GB; the P4 is a Pascal part and the RTX 3060 is Ampere (compute capability 6.1 vs 8.6); only the RTX 3060 supports BF16, INT4 compute. On price, the P4 lists from $0.069/GPU/hr and the RTX 3060 from $0.110/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the P4 and the RTX 3060?
The P4 is listed in 1 region and the RTX 3060 in 2 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the P4 vs the RTX 3060?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $69 on the P4 and $110 on the RTX 3060, a difference of $41 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the P4 have compared to the RTX 3060?
The P4 has 8 GB of VRAM; the RTX 3060 has 12 GB.
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 P4 page and RTX 3060 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 P4 VRAM calculator and the RTX 3060 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More P4 comparisons
More RTX 3060 comparisons
Related reading: H100 pricing and specs, H100 vs H200, A100 vs H100, H100 and H200: SXM vs NVL vs PCIe, and The best GPUs for AI, ranked.
