NVIDIA RTX 4090 Laptop vs NVIDIA RTX 5080
Which graphics card is better for running local language models? Here is how the NVIDIA RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB) compares against the NVIDIA RTX 5080 (16 GB) in real memory headroom, supported model architectures, and generation speed.
NVIDIA · Mobile
16 GB VRAM
NVIDIA RTX 4090 Laptop
- Memory Bandwidth: 512 GB/s (GDDR6)
- Fits fully in VRAM: 31 popular models
- Power Draw (TDP): 150W
- Largest recommended (Q4): 20B–22B
NVIDIA · Blackwell
16 GB VRAM
NVIDIA RTX 5080
- Memory Bandwidth: 960 GB/s (GDDR7 256-bit)
- Fits fully in VRAM: 31 popular models
- Power Draw (TDP): 400W
- Largest recommended (Q4): 20B–22B
The AI Local Check Verdict: Which GPU should you buy for AI?
Both graphics cards share the exact same VRAM capacity (16 GB), meaning they can run the exact same parameter counts and quantization levels.
The deciding factor is memory bandwidth: The NVIDIA RTX 5080 leads with 960 GB/s vs 512 GB/s (88.0% faster memory), resulting in noticeably faster inference.
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