NVIDIA RTX 5090 vs NVIDIA RTX 4090
Which graphics card is better for running local language models? Here is how the NVIDIA RTX 5090 (32 GB) compares against the NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB) in real memory headroom, supported model architectures, and generation speed.
NVIDIA · Blackwell
32 GB VRAM
NVIDIA RTX 5090
- Memory Bandwidth: 1792 GB/s (GDDR7 512-bit)
- Fits fully in VRAM: 37 popular models
- Power Draw (TDP): 575W
- Largest recommended (Q4): 49B–70B
NVIDIA · Ada Lovelace
24 GB VRAM
NVIDIA RTX 4090
- Memory Bandwidth: 1008 GB/s (GDDR6X 384-bit)
- Fits fully in VRAM: 36 popular models
- Power Draw (TDP): 450W
- Largest recommended (Q4): 32B–34B
The AI Local Check Verdict: Which GPU should you buy for AI?
The NVIDIA RTX 5090 is the clear winner for local AI. It provides both 8 GB more VRAM and higher memory bandwidth (1792 GB/s vs 1008 GB/s).
This allows it to run larger model architectures entirely in video memory while also delivering faster token generation speeds on models of all sizes.
Models that fit on NVIDIA RTX 5090, but NOT on NVIDIA RTX 4090
These models run entirely in GPU VRAM on the NVIDIA RTX 5090, but require slow system RAM offload on the NVIDIA RTX 4090:
| Model | Size | Downloads | NVIDIA RTX 5090 | NVIDIA RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MaziyarPanahi/Mixtral-8x22B-v0.1-GGUF | 140.62B | 158,504 | Fits in VRAM | Offload (Slow) |
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