RTX 5090 vs RTX A6000: Specs, VRAM & Price
Short answer: choose the RTX A6000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5090 when 32 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
The RTX 5090 has 32 GB of VRAM; the RTX A6000 has 48 GB.
You can rent both by the hour, no purchase required. RTX 5090 from $0.613/GPU/hr; RTX A6000 from $0.550/GPU/hr. The RTX A6000 is 10% cheaper at the entry rate.
RTX 5090
Good for inference and light fine-tuning workloads
RTX A6000
Good for training and inference on models that don't need FP8 kernels
Last updated: 2026-11-03 UTCRefreshes every 6 hours
Specs side by side
| Spec | RTX 5090 | RTX A6000 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 32 GB | 48 GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,792 GB/s | 768 GB/s |
| Architecture | Blackwell | Ampere |
| Compute capability | 12.0 | 8.6 |
| Precisions in hardware | FP32, FP16, BF16, FP8, INT4 | FP32, FP16, BF16, INT4 |
| NVLink / multi-GPU interconnect | – | NVLink, 2-way |
| Max board power (TDP) | 575W | 300W |
| Form factor | PCIe 5.0 x16 | – |
| Regions | 2 | 2 |
On-demand price
| Rate | RTX 5090 | RTX A6000 |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest per GPU/hr | $1.09/GPU/hr | $0.550/GPU/hr |
Which is better for AI: RTX 5090 or RTX A6000?
Choose the RTX A6000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5090 when 32 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
RTX 5090 vs RTX A6000: common questions
Is the RTX 5090 or the RTX A6000 better for AI?
Short answer: choose the RTX A6000 when 48 GB of VRAM is the gating requirement. Choose the RTX 5090 when 32 GB is enough for the workload and availability points that way.
Is the RTX 5090 or the RTX A6000 cheaper to rent?
On Aquanode's live marketplace the RTX 5090 starts at $0.613/GPU/hr (median $1.10/GPU/hr) and the RTX A6000 starts at $0.550/GPU/hr (median $0.616/GPU/hr). The RTX A6000 is the cheaper of the two at the entry rate, by 10%.
What is the difference between the RTX 5090 and the RTX A6000?
The RTX 5090 has 32 GB of VRAM against the RTX A6000's 48 GB; the RTX 5090 is a Blackwell part and the RTX A6000 is Ampere (compute capability 12.0 vs 8.6); only the RTX 5090 supports FP8 compute. On price, the RTX 5090 lists from $0.613/GPU/hr and the RTX A6000 from $0.550/GPU/hr.
How widely available are the RTX 5090 and the RTX A6000?
The RTX 5090 is listed in 2 regions and the RTX A6000 in 2 regions right now.
How much does 1,000 GPU-hours cost on the RTX 5090 vs the RTX A6000?
At the lowest rates listed today, 1,000 GPU-hours costs $613 on the RTX 5090 and $550 on the RTX A6000, a difference of $63 for the same runtime. Rates are per GPU per hour and update hourly.
How much VRAM does the RTX 5090 have compared to the RTX A6000?
The RTX 5090 has 32 GB of VRAM; the RTX A6000 has 48 GB.
Does the RTX 5090 or the RTX A6000 support NVLink?
The RTX A6000 supports NVLink, 2-way; the RTX 5090 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 5090 page and RTX A6000 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 5090 VRAM calculator and the RTX A6000 VRAM calculator, or browse every model by generation in the GPU index.
More RTX 5090 comparisons
More RTX A6000 comparisons
Related reading: RTX 5090 pricing and specs, RTX 5090 for AI, RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090, RTX 5080 vs RTX 5090, and RTX PRO 6000 vs RTX 5090.
