RTX 4090 is $400.00 more expensive than RTX 4080, while offering higher throughput.
Quick answer
RTX 4090 leads raw throughput, while RTX 4080 offers the stronger value profile for most buyers.
| Spec | RTX 4090 | RTX 4080 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 24GB | 16GB |
| Cores | 16,384 | 9,728 |
| TDP | 450W | 320W |
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | Ada Lovelace |
| Lowest price | $1,599.00 | $1,199.00 |
| Model | Quantization | RTX 4090 | RTX 4080 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ibm-research/PowerMoE-3b | Q4 | 235.77 tok/s | 150.25 tok/s |
| apple/OpenELM-1_1B-Instruct | Q4 | 235.64 tok/s | 139.36 tok/s |
| bigcode/starcoder2-3b | Q4 | 235.45 tok/s | 133.70 tok/s |
| google/gemma-3-1b-it | Q4 | 234.09 tok/s | 147.17 tok/s |
| allenai/OLMo-2-0425-1B | Q4 | 232.28 tok/s | 161.13 tok/s |
RTX 4090 wins pure speed in this comparison, while RTX 4080 is the better value option for price-to-performance.
Use the winner cards for a quick direction, then verify model compatibility with your target models and VRAM requirements before purchase.
Use the compatibility checker and model requirement pages to validate whether your target quantization and workload fit either GPU.