RTX 3080 vs RTX PRO 5000: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX PRO 5000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The RTX 3080 has 12 GB of VRAM; the RTX PRO 5000 has 48 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. RTX 3080 from $0.187/GPU/hr; RTX PRO 5000 from $0.845/GPU/hr. The RTX 3080 is 78% cheaper at the entry rate.
RTX 3080
Good for inference and small-scale training workloads
RTX PRO 5000
Good for fine-tuning mid-size models and high-throughput inference
Last updated: 2026-10-10 22:01:10 UTCRefreshes hourly
Specs side by side
| Spec | RTX 3080 | RTX PRO 5000 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 12 GB | 48 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 760 GB/s | 1,344 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 | 119 TFLOPS | – |
| Max board power (TDP) | 320W | 300W |
| Regions | 1 | 2 |
On-demand price
| Rate | RTX 3080 | RTX PRO 5000 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.187/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.845/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) |
Which is better for AI: RTX 3080 or RTX PRO 5000?
Choose the RTX PRO 5000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
RTX 3080 vs RTX PRO 5000: common questions
Is the RTX 3080 or the RTX PRO 5000 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX PRO 5000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the RTX 3080 or the RTX PRO 5000 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the RTX 3080 starts at $0.187/GPU/hr (median $0.198/GPU/hr) and the RTX PRO 5000 starts at $0.845/GPU/hr (median $0.958/GPU/hr). The RTX 3080 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 78%.
What is the difference between the RTX 3080 and the RTX PRO 5000?
The RTX 3080 has 12 GB of VRAM against the RTX PRO 5000's 48 GB; the RTX 3080 is an Ampere part and the RTX PRO 5000 is Blackwell (compute capability 8.6 vs 12.0); only the RTX PRO 5000 supports FP8 compute. On price, the RTX 3080 lists from $0.187/GPU/hr and the RTX PRO 5000 from $0.845/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the RTX 3080 and the RTX PRO 5000?
The RTX 3080 is listed in 1 region and the RTX PRO 5000 in 2 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the RTX 3080 vs the RTX PRO 5000?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $187 on the RTX 3080 and $845 on the RTX PRO 5000, a difference of $658 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the RTX 3080 have compared to the RTX PRO 5000?
The RTX 3080 has 12 GB of VRAM; the RTX PRO 5000 has 48 GB.
Does the RTX 3080 or the RTX PRO 5000 support NVLink?
Neither the RTX 3080 nor the RTX PRO 5000 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 3080 page and RTX PRO 5000 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 3080 VRAM calculator and the RTX PRO 5000 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More RTX 3080 comparisons
More RTX PRO 5000 comparisons
Related reading: RTX 3080 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.
