RTX 3070 vs RTX 5090: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX 5090 when 32 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3070 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The RTX 3070 has 8 GB of VRAM; the RTX 5090 has 32 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. RTX 3070 from $0.143/GPU/hr across 1 provider; RTX 5090 from $0.614/GPU/hr across 3 providers. The RTX 3070 is 77% cheaper at the entry rate.
RTX 3070
Good for inference and small-scale training workloads
RTX 5090
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-07 22:33:52 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | RTX 3070 | RTX 5090 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 8 GB | 32 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 448 GB/s | 1,792 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ampere | Blackwell |
| Compute capability | 8.6 | 12.0 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | 81.3 TFLOPS | – |
| Max board power (TDP) | 220W | 575W |
| Form factor | – | PCIe 5.0 x16 |
| Providers | 1 | 3 |
| Regions | 1 | 3 |
On-demand price
| Rate | RTX 3070 | RTX 5090 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.143/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.903/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: RTX 3070 or RTX 5090?
Choose the RTX 5090 when 32 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3070 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
RTX 3070 vs RTX 5090: common questions
Is the RTX 3070 or the RTX 5090 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX 5090 when 32 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3070 when 8 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the RTX 3070 or the RTX 5090 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the RTX 3070 starts at $0.143/GPU/hr (median $0.143/GPU/hr across 1 provider) and the RTX 5090 starts at $0.614/GPU/hr (median $0.907/GPU/hr across 3 providers). The RTX 3070 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 77%.
What is the difference between the RTX 3070 and the RTX 5090?
The RTX 3070 has 8 GB of VRAM against the RTX 5090's 32 GB; the RTX 3070 is an Ampere part and the RTX 5090 is Blackwell (compute capability 8.6 vs 12.0); only the RTX 5090 supports FP8 compute. On price, the RTX 3070 lists from $0.143/GPU/hr and the RTX 5090 from $0.614/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the RTX 3070 and the RTX 5090?
1 provider list the RTX 3070 and 3 list the RTX 5090, across 1 and 3 regions respectively. 1 provider currently lists both models.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the RTX 3070 vs the RTX 5090?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $143 on the RTX 3070 and $614 on the RTX 5090, a difference of $471 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the RTX 3070 have compared to the RTX 5090?
The RTX 3070 has 8 GB of VRAM; the RTX 5090 has 32 GB.
Does the RTX 3070 or the RTX 5090 support NVLink?
Neither the RTX 3070 nor the RTX 5090 has a 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 RTX 3070 page and RTX 5090 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 RTX 3070 VRAM calculator and the RTX 5090 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More RTX 3070 comparisons
More RTX 5090 comparisons
Related reading: RTX 3070 pricing and specs, The NVIDIA Inception program, explained, Google Colab alternatives for dedicated GPU access, Free GPU credits for students and researchers, and RunPod volume disk vs. network volume, compared.
