RTX 3090 vs RTX 5070: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX 3090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5070 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
The RTX 3090 has 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 5070 has 12 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. RTX 3090 from $0.198/GPU/hr; RTX 5070 from $0.260/GPU/hr. The RTX 3090 is 24% cheaper at the entry rate.
RTX 3090
Good for inference and small-scale training workloads
RTX 5070
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
Last updated: 2026-10-16 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
Specs side by side
| Spec | RTX 3090 | RTX 5070 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 24 GB | 12 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 936 GB/s | 672 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 | 142 TFLOPS | 123.5 TFLOPS |
| Peak FP8 tensor TFLOPS | – | 246.9 TFLOPS |
| NVLink / multi-GPU interconnect | NVLink, 2-way | – |
| Max board power (TDP) | 350W | 250W |
| Form factor | PCIe 4.0 x16 | – |
| Regions | 2 | 1 |
On-demand price
| Rate | RTX 3090 | RTX 5070 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $0.198/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) | $0.260/GPU/hr (cheapest overall) |
Which is better for AI: RTX 3090 or RTX 5070?
Choose the RTX 3090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5070 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
RTX 3090 vs RTX 5070: common questions
Is the RTX 3090 or the RTX 5070 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX 3090 when 24 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5070 when 12 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
Is the RTX 3090 or the RTX 5070 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the RTX 3090 starts at $0.198/GPU/hr (median $0.639/GPU/hr) and the RTX 5070 starts at $0.260/GPU/hr (median $0.297/GPU/hr). The RTX 3090 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 24%.
What is the difference between the RTX 3090 and the RTX 5070?
The RTX 3090 has 24 GB of VRAM against the RTX 5070's 12 GB; the RTX 3090 is an Ampere part and the RTX 5070 is Blackwell (compute capability 8.6 vs 12.0); only the RTX 5070 supports FP8 compute. On price, the RTX 3090 lists from $0.198/GPU/hr and the RTX 5070 from $0.260/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the RTX 3090 and the RTX 5070?
The RTX 3090 is listed in 2 regions and the RTX 5070 in 1 region right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the RTX 3090 vs the RTX 5070?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $198 on the RTX 3090 and $260 on the RTX 5070, a difference of $62 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the RTX 3090 have compared to the RTX 5070?
The RTX 3090 has 24 GB of VRAM; the RTX 5070 has 12 GB.
Does the RTX 3090 or the RTX 5070 support NVLink?
The RTX 3090 supports NVLink, 2-way; the RTX 5070 has no 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 3090 page and RTX 5070 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 3090 VRAM calculator and the RTX 5070 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More RTX 3090 comparisons
More RTX 5070 comparisons
Related reading: RTX 3090 pricing and specs, and RTX 3090 for AI.
