RTX 3080 vs RTX 4090: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX 4090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 10 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
The RTX 3080 has 10 GB of VRAM; the RTX 4090 has 24 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. RTX 3080 from $0.132/GPU/hr; RTX 4090 from $0.416/GPU/hr. The RTX 3080 is 68% cheaper at the entry rate.
RTX 3080
Good for inference and small-scale training workloads
RTX 4090
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
Last updated: 2026-11-03 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
Specs side by side
| Spec | RTX 3080 | RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 10 GB | 24 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 760 GB/s | 1,008 GB/s |
| Architecture | Ampere | Ada Lovelace |
| Compute capability | 8.6 | 8.9 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 |
| Peak FP16/BF16 tensor TFLOPS | 119 TFLOPS | – |
| Max board power (TDP) | 320W | 450W |
| Form factor | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 |
| Regions | 2 | 3 |
On-demand price
| Rate | RTX 3080 | RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.132/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.416/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) |
Which is better for AI: RTX 3080 or RTX 4090?
Choose the RTX 4090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 10 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
RTX 3080 vs RTX 4090: common questions
Is the RTX 3080 or the RTX 4090 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX 4090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 3080 when 10 GB is enough for the workload and the lower hourly rate points that way.
Is the RTX 3080 or the RTX 4090 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the RTX 3080 starts at $0.132/GPU/hr (median $0.298/GPU/hr) and the RTX 4090 starts at $0.416/GPU/hr (median $0.762/GPU/hr). The RTX 3080 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 68%.
What is the difference between the RTX 3080 and the RTX 4090?
The RTX 3080 has 10 GB of VRAM against the RTX 4090's 24 GB; the RTX 3080 is an Ampere part and the RTX 4090 is Ada Lovelace (compute capability 8.6 vs 8.9); only the RTX 4090 supports FP8 compute. On price, the RTX 3080 lists from $0.132/GPU/hr and the RTX 4090 from $0.416/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the RTX 3080 and the RTX 4090?
The RTX 3080 is listed in 2 regions and the RTX 4090 in 3 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the RTX 3080 vs the RTX 4090?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $132 on the RTX 3080 and $416 on the RTX 4090, a difference of $284 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 4090?
The RTX 3080 has 10 GB of VRAM; the RTX 4090 has 24 GB.
Does the RTX 3080 or the RTX 4090 support NVLink?
Neither the RTX 3080 nor the RTX 4090 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 4090 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 4090 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More RTX 3080 comparisons
More RTX 4090 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.
Related on Aquanode: RTX 3080 vs RTX 4080 specs, RTX 3080 vs RTX 4070 specs, MI325X vs RTX 4090 specs, and GPU requirements for Qwen3.5-9B. Browse the full lists: Compare any two GPUs side by side and RTX 3080 price in every region.
