P40 vs RTX 5000 Ada: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX 5000 Ada when 32 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P40 when 24 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The P40 has 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 5000 Ada has 32 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. P40 from $0.173/GPU/hr; RTX 5000 Ada from $0.539/GPU/hr. The P40 is 68% cheaper at the entry rate.
P40
Good for inference workloads on older-generation hardware
RTX 5000 Ada
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-10 17:50:44 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | P40 | RTX 5000 Ada |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 24 GB | 32 GB |
| Architecture | Pascal | Ada Lovelace |
| Compute capability | 6.1 | 8.9 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Form factor | PCIe | – |
| Regions | 1 | 1 |
On-demand price
| Rate | P40 | RTX 5000 Ada |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.173/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.539/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) |
Which is better for AI: P40 or RTX 5000 Ada?
Choose the RTX 5000 Ada when 32 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P40 when 24 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
P40 vs RTX 5000 Ada: common questions
Is the P40 or the RTX 5000 Ada better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX 5000 Ada when 32 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the P40 when 24 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the P40 or the RTX 5000 Ada cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the P40 starts at $0.173/GPU/hr (median $0.173/GPU/hr) and the RTX 5000 Ada starts at $0.539/GPU/hr (median $0.539/GPU/hr). The P40 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 68%.
What is the difference between the P40 and the RTX 5000 Ada?
The P40 has 24 GB of VRAM against the RTX 5000 Ada's 32 GB; the P40 is a Pascal part and the RTX 5000 Ada is Ada Lovelace (compute capability 6.1 vs 8.9); only the RTX 5000 Ada supports BF16, FP8, INT4 compute. On price, the P40 lists from $0.173/GPU/hr and the RTX 5000 Ada from $0.539/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the P40 and the RTX 5000 Ada?
The P40 is listed in 1 region and the RTX 5000 Ada in 1 region right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the P40 vs the RTX 5000 Ada?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $173 on the P40 and $539 on the RTX 5000 Ada, a difference of $366 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the P40 have compared to the RTX 5000 Ada?
The P40 has 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 5000 Ada has 32 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 P40 page and RTX 5000 Ada 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 P40 VRAM calculator and the RTX 5000 Ada VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More P40 comparisons
More RTX 5000 Ada 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.
