NVIDIA vs AMD GPUs for AI Workloads (2026)

TL;DR

• Best overall: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 — see nvidia.com
• Best value: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (used) — $2,199.99 renewed (as of 11/06/2026 14:10 UTC - Details) · Check price on Amazon

Memory decides which models a card can run; bandwidth decides how fast. In Hardware Corner's lab, 30B-32B models at 4-bit ran on 24 GB cards and on no 16 GB card, every 16 GB card it tested loaded a 14B model with a 32K context, and the 32 GB RTX 5090 loaded the same models as the 24 GB cards with longer context [src3]. Compute Market adds that a 70B model fits the RTX 5090 only at aggressive 3-bit quantization [src7]. Within a memory tier, bandwidth sets the pace: the RTX 5090's 1,792 GB/s put it 27-29% ahead of the RTX 4090 in Puget Systems' two LLM tests [src1, src2].

On NVIDIA against AMD, the tests agree. The RTX 5090 led Puget Systems' MLPerf Client token generation; the first non-NVIDIA card was the RX 7900 XTX at 127 tok/s, just ahead of the RTX 5070, with the RX 9070 XT just behind it, tied with the RTX 4070 SUPER [src2]. In Puget's DaVinci Resolve tests, AI workflows were "solidly in NVIDIA's favor" [src2]. Tom's Hardware found that in Procyon's AI tests "Nvidia pretty much clobbers AMD", and StorageReview's Procyon results put an RTX 5070 Ti well ahead of the RX 9070 XT, with scores of 4,179 against 2,080 in Phi text generation and 3,755 against 2,598 in Stable Diffusion 1.5 [src4, src5]. AMD's software has improved: Compute Market says ROCm 7.2, released in March 2026, brought Ollama, llama.cpp and vLLM "parity with CUDA out of the box", and AMD's PyTorch on Windows supports the RX 7900 XTX and RX 9070 XT on Windows 11 [src8, src12]. But Compute Market also says Windows ROCm trails Linux by one minor version, and XDA's verdict is that "if you want plug-and-play support with most things, CUDA is the way you get that at the moment" [src8, src6]. Puget Systems, testing AMD's Radeon AI PRO R9700, says the RTX 5090 remains "roughly 3–4× faster per GPU on decode-bound workloads" [src13].

The market is the rest of the answer. Tom's Hardware reported on 2026-09-14 that the RTX 5090 had vanished from US online retail apart from third-party sellers asking $6,500 to $9,500, and on 2026-10-10 an unverified report that NVIDIA had stopped making it [src10, src11]. Its price tracker, updated 2026-10-12, says RTX 40-series cards are no longer produced, puts the best US prices at $7,177 for an RTX 5090, $4,399 for an RTX 4090, $1,658 for an RTX 4080 SUPER and $814 for an RX 9070 XT, and lists the RX 7900 XTX as out of stock [src9]. Used RTX 3090s have climbed too: XDA found recent sales from around $1,000 on 2026-10-07, after $600 to $800 earlier in the year [src6]. Every price on this card is dated for that reason.

Best Overall: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 — Check price

The fastest consumer card at LLM token generation. Puget Systems measured it about 29% ahead of the RTX 4090 in llama.cpp token generation, and it was the only GPU under 100 ms to the first token in Puget's MLPerf Client test [src1]; in Puget's later roundup it led MLPerf Client token generation with a 27% uplift over the 4090 and was "the fastest GPU on the market" [src2]. Hardware Corner recorded 145 tok/s on Qwen3 8B, 103 on Qwen3 14B and 51 on Qwen3 32B at a 16K context, and calls it "the new speed leader for consumer GPUs" [src3]. Compute Market names it best overall [src7]. Its 32 GB of GDDR7 at 1,792 GB/s (575 W) [src1] runs dense 32B models with double the context of a 24 GB card, about 32K tokens, though Hardware Corner notes that 32 GB "won't unlock entirely new models compared to 24GB GPUs" [src3]; a 70B model fits only at aggressive 3-bit quantization, according to Compute Market [src7]. Puget's early-2025 test found its llama.cpp prompt processing well below expectations and pointed to immature software support [src1].

Availability (checked through 2026-10-14): our last three Amazon price checks, through 2026-10-13, found no purchasable offer, and when we checked on 2026-10-14 the Amazon listing was out of stock and listed under the brand "Generic", not NVIDIA's own, so our link goes to NVIDIA's own RTX 5090 page. Tom's Hardware reported on 2026-09-14 that the card had vanished from US online retail apart from third-party sellers asking $6,500 to $9,500, and wrote "we don't recommend buying from one of these third-party sellers" [src10]; its tracker put the best US price at $7,177 on 2026-10-12, against a $1,999 launch price [src9]. On 2026-10-10 it reported an unverified claim that NVIDIA will no longer make RTX 5090s; existing stock may last a while, but it expects availability to "inevitably decline" [src11]. Best you can buy today among this card's picks is the used RTX 3090 below, the only card here with 24 GB that had an offer in our 2026-10-13 check.

Best Value: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (used) — Check price

Recommended by three outlets for its 24 GB. Hardware Corner measured 87 tok/s on Qwen3 8B, "nearly identical to the newer RTX 5070 Ti", and 30 tok/s on Qwen3 32B, a model no 16 GB card can load; it calls a used 3090 "the top choice for a single-GPU setup" [src3]. Compute Market calls it the best budget 24 GB option and says "the 3090 also runs the exact same models as the 4090" [src7]. XDA's writer, who owns an RTX 5080, wrote on 2026-10-07 that he would still buy a used RTX 3090 for local AI, because 27B-32B models fit on it and not on his card [src6]. 936 GB/s of bandwidth [src3], 350 W [src7]. The catches, per XDA: "There are no more new RTX 3090s", used ones carry no warranty and "almost certainly need thermal pad replacement", and recent used sales run from around $1,000, up from $600 to $800 earlier in 2026 [src6]. Puget Systems tested the RTX 3090 Ti, a different card, so its results are not used for the 3090 here [src1, src2].

What our link sells (checked 2026-10-13): Amazon's Renewed listing of MSI's RTX 3090 Ventus 3X 24G OC, which in our 2026-10-13 check was low stock from a marketplace seller at $1,849.99, nearly twice the roughly $1,000 at which XDA found recent used sales starting [src6]. The value case the outlets make rests on used prices: around $800 in Hardware Corner's December 2025 ranking, $699-$999 in Compute Market's guide, and from around $1,000 in XDA's October 2026 article [src3, src7, src6].

Best AMD for Local LLMs: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX — Check price

AMD's strongest card for local LLMs in the tests we read. In Puget Systems' MLPerf Client test it was "the first non-NVIDIA GPU … at 127 tokens per second, just ahead of the RTX 5070", with AMD's newer RX 9070 XT just behind it [src2]. Compute Market's AMD guide calls it "the best AMD GPU for local LLM inference under $1,000", on ROCm 7.2 [src8]. XDA calls it "a credible choice for someone who only runs LLMs on Linux through ROCm", but prefers the used RTX 3090 for CUDA's plug-and-play support [src6]. 24 GB of GDDR6 at 960 GB/s, 355 W [src1]; $999 at launch [src9]. Puget's spec table lists 122.8 INT8 AI TOPS for it against 660.6 for the RTX 4090 [src1]. On Windows, AMD's PyTorch on Windows 7.2.1 (March 2026) supports it on Windows 11 [src12], but Compute Market says Windows ROCm trails Linux by one minor version [src8].

Availability (checked 2026-10-13): the XFX Speedster MERC310 listing we link had no purchasable offer in our 2026-10-13 check, and Tom's Hardware's tracker listed the RX 7900 XTX as out of stock on 2026-10-12 [src9]; XDA found it for $700 to $900 on 2026-10-07 [src6].

Alternative — fast 24 GB, out of production: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 — Check price

The fastest 24 GB card in Hardware Corner's lab, and second on this page after the RTX 5090: 104 tok/s on Qwen3 8B and 38 tok/s on Qwen3 32B, against the 5090's 145 and 51 [src3]; Puget Systems measured the 5090 about 29% ahead in llama.cpp token generation [src1]. Compute Market still calls it the best value, at $1,599-$1,999 [src7], far below Tom's Hardware's latest figure: its tracker says RTX 40-series cards are no longer produced and put the best US price at $4,399 on 2026-10-12, against a $1,599 launch price [src9]. 24 GB of GDDR6X at 1,008 GB/s [src7], 450 W [src1]. The GIGABYTE RTX 4090 Gaming OC listing we link had no purchasable offer in our 2026-10-13 check.

Alternative — 16 GB NVIDIA, out of production: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER — Check price

Compute Market's mid-range pick, "great for 7B--13B models"; it notes that 16 GB does not get you "30B+ models at any quantization" [src7]. Hardware Corner measured 79 tok/s on Qwen3 8B and 123 tok/s on gpt-oss 20B, and every 16 GB card it tested loaded a 14B model with a 32K context [src3]. In the same lab the used RTX 3090 was faster on Qwen3 8B (87 tok/s) and also runs 32B models [src3], and Puget Systems found the newer RTX 5080 "outpaces the RTX 4080 and 4080 SUPER by around 20%" in MLPerf Client token generation [src1]. 736 GB/s, 320 W [src1]; $999 at launch, and out of production, with a best US price of $1,658 on Tom's Hardware's tracker on 2026-10-12 [src9]. In our 2026-10-13 check the listing we link had an offer only from a marketplace seller.

Alternative — AMD's current generation, 16 GB: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT — Check price

Compute Market's best mid-range AMD GPU, "the right pick if your target is small-to-mid models — 7B to 14B dense" [src8]. In most of the AI tests we read it trails NVIDIA cards. In Puget Systems' MLPerf Client test it came in just behind the RX 7900 XTX, "effectively tied with the 4070 SUPER", and Puget found that it "frequently struggled to match AMD's prior-gen 7900 XTX" [src2]. Tom's Hardware, testing PowerColor's Reaper cards, wrote that in Procyon's AI tests "Nvidia pretty much clobbers AMD": the RTX 4070 beat the 9070 XT in Stable Diffusion XL (AMD led in SD 1.5) and was 71% faster in AI Vision, and in MLPerf Client the 9070 cards came in below the older RX 7900 XT in tokens per second [src4]. StorageReview, testing the ASUS Prime RX 9070 XT we link, measured a score of 2,080 in Procyon's Phi text-generation test against 4,179 for an RTX 5070 Ti, and concluded that the card "trailed in AI tasks", with drivers limiting some AI workloads at launch [src5]. Those two reviews date from its March 2025 launch; Compute Market says ROCm 7.2, a year later, brought native Ollama support for it [src8], and AMD's PyTorch on Windows supports it [src12]. 16 GB of GDDR6 at 640 GB/s, 304 W [src5]; $599 at launch and $814 on Tom's Hardware's tracker on 2026-10-12 [src9]. In our 2026-10-13 check it was in stock at Amazon.com itself, the only card on this page sold by Amazon.com that day.

Head-to-Head Comparisons

RTX 5090 vs RTX 4090

The RTX 5090 led the RTX 4090 by about 29% in Puget Systems' llama.cpp token generation and 27% in its MLPerf Client test [src1, src2]; Hardware Corner measured 145 against 104 tok/s on Qwen3 8B and 51 against 38 tok/s on Qwen3 32B [src3]. The 5090's extra 8 GB runs the same models with longer context, not new ones [src3]. Both are scarce: Tom's Hardware's tracker put their best US prices at $7,177 and $4,399 on 2026-10-12 [src9], and neither had an Amazon offer in our 2026-10-13 check.

Pick RTX 5090 if: you want the most speed and context a consumer card offers and can find one from a seller you trust.
Pick RTX 4090 if: you find one well below a 5090's price; it runs the same models, more slowly.

Used RTX 3090 vs RX 7900 XTX

Both have 24 GB, at 936 and 960 GB/s [src3, src1]. We found no lab result comparing them directly: Hardware Corner tested the 3090 and no AMD card, and Puget Systems tested the 7900 XTX alongside the RTX 3090 Ti, not the 3090 [src3, src2]. XDA prefers the 3090 for CUDA's plug-and-play support and calls the XTX "a credible choice" for LLMs on Linux with ROCm; on 2026-10-07 it found the XTX for $700 to $900 and used 3090s selling from around $1,000 [src6]. Tom's Hardware's tracker listed the XTX as out of stock on 2026-10-12 [src9].

Pick a used RTX 3090 if: you want CUDA on Windows or Linux and accept a used card without a warranty.
Pick RX 7900 XTX if: you run Linux, are comfortable with ROCm, and can find one.

RX 7900 XTX vs RX 9070 XT

AMD's two cards here. In Puget Systems' MLPerf Client test the 7900 XTX generated 127 tok/s and the 9070 XT came in just behind it, tied with the RTX 4070 SUPER; Puget found the 9070 XT "frequently struggled to match" the older card [src2]. The 7900 XTX has 24 GB to the 9070 XT's 16 GB, and Compute Market's AMD guide points 24 GB buyers to the XTX and 7B-14B models to the 9070 XT [src8]. AMD's PyTorch on Windows supports both [src12]. On 2026-10-12 Tom's Hardware's tracker listed the XTX as out of stock and the 9070 XT at $814 [src9].

Pick RX 7900 XTX if: you want 24 GB from AMD and can find one.
Pick RX 9070 XT if: you want a new current-generation AMD card for 7B-14B models.

RTX 4080 SUPER vs RX 9070 XT

Both have 16 GB. In Puget Systems' DaVinci Resolve tests, which included both, AI workflows were "solidly in NVIDIA's favor", with "the RTX 4060 and AMD Radeon cards" just above Intel's at the bottom; in its MLPerf Client test the 9070 XT tied the RTX 4070 SUPER [src2]. Hardware Corner measured the 4080 SUPER at 79 tok/s on Qwen3 8B but did not test the 9070 XT [src3]. The 4080 SUPER is out of production; Tom's Hardware's tracker put the two cards' best US prices at $1,658 and $814 on 2026-10-12, against $999 and $599 at launch [src9].

Pick RTX 4080 SUPER if: you want CUDA at 16 GB and find one near its launch price.
Pick RX 9070 XT if: you want a new 16 GB card for less and will run it with ROCm.

Decision Logic

If budget is over $2,000 and you want the fastest card

→ RTX 5090, if you can find one from a seller you trust. It had no Amazon offer in our last three checks, through 2026-10-13; Tom's Hardware put the best US price at $7,177 on 2026-10-12 and advises against the third-party sellers asking $6,500 to $9,500 [src3, src9, src10].

If budget is $1,000-$2,000

→ Used RTX 3090: 24 GB with CUDA for 30B-32B models; expect around $1,000 or more used, with no warranty [src3, src6].

If budget is under $1,000

→ AMD: a new RX 9070 XT ($814 on Tom's Hardware's tracker on 2026-10-12) for 7B-14B models, or an RX 7900 XTX for 24 GB if you can find one (XDA saw $700 to $900 on 2026-10-07). Both run best on Linux with ROCm [src9, src6, src8]. For NVIDIA cards under $1,000, see Best Consumer GPUs for Running AI Locally.

If you run Linux and want AMD

→ RX 7900 XTX: the fastest Radeon in Puget Systems' MLPerf Client test and Compute Market's best AMD GPU for local LLMs; Tom's Hardware listed it out of stock on 2026-10-12 [src2, src8, src9].

If you use Windows

→ NVIDIA. AMD's PyTorch on Windows now supports the RX 7900 XTX and RX 9070 XT [src12], but Compute Market says Windows ROCm trails Linux by one minor version and advises "don't make Windows your AI box" for AMD [src8]; XDA says CUDA is the way to get plug-and-play support [src6].

If you rely on CUDA-specific tools or image generation

→ NVIDIA. Compute Market says tools such as TensorRT-LLM, llama.cpp's CUDA optimizations and some ComfyUI nodes work best on NVIDIA [src7]; in Tom's Hardware's Procyon Stable Diffusion and AI Vision tests, "Nvidia pretty much clobbers AMD" [src4].

Default recommendation (unknown requirements)

→ Used RTX 3090 if you accept a used card: 24 GB and CUDA, recommended by Hardware Corner, Compute Market and XDA [src3, src7, src6]. Step up to the RTX 5090 only if you need its speed and can find one.

• RTX 5090 scarcity: by 2026-09-14 the card had vanished from US online retail except from third-party sellers at $6,500 to $9,500 [src10]; Tom's Hardware's tracker put the best US price at $7,177 on 2026-10-12 [src9]; and on 2026-10-10 Tom's Hardware reported an unverified claim, not confirmed by NVIDIA, that NVIDIA will make no more RTX 5090s [src11].
• RTX 40 series out of production: Tom's Hardware's tracker says RTX 40-series GPUs "are no longer being produced", with best US prices of $4,399 for an RTX 4090 and $1,658 for an RTX 4080 SUPER on 2026-10-12 [src9].
• Used RTX 3090 prices rising: XDA saw used listings at $600 to $800 earlier in 2026 and recent sales from around $1,000 by October [src6].
• AMD's software catching up: Compute Market says ROCm 7.2, released in March 2026, brought Ollama, llama.cpp and vLLM "parity with CUDA out of the box", with native Ollama support for the RX 7900 XTX and RX 9070 XT [src8], and AMD's PyTorch on Windows (March 2026) supports both [src12]. XDA still recommends CUDA for plug-and-play support [src6].
• A 32 GB AMD workstation card: Puget Systems tested two Radeon AI PRO R9700s (32 GB each); it says the RTX 5090 remains "roughly 3–4× faster per GPU on decode-bound workloads", while two R9700s cost less than half as much as two RTX 5090s at Puget's July 2026 prices [src13].
• Memory over speed: Hardware Corner found that 24 GB is what enables 30B-32B models, "something simply impossible on 16GB GPUs" [src3].

• Prices on this card are dated. Launch prices and the 2026-10-12 best US prices come from Tom's Hardware's tracker [src9]; street prices from XDA on 2026-10-07 [src6] and Tom's Hardware on 2026-09-14 [src10]; Amazon prices from our own checks. Compute Market lists the RTX 5090 at $1,999-$2,199 and the RTX 4090 at $1,599-$1,999 [src7], far below what Tom's Hardware found, so this card does not use those figures. The table at the top of the page shows today's price and stock.
• The speed figures come from different benchmarks: Hardware Corner's llama.cpp runs at 4-bit with a 16K context on Linux [src3], Puget Systems' MLPerf Client [src2], and Tom's Hardware's and StorageReview's Procyon tests [src4, src5]. Compare cards within one benchmark, not across them.
• The RX 9070 XT reviews by Tom's Hardware and StorageReview date from its March 2025 launch, and StorageReview noted that drivers limited some AI workloads [src4, src5]; Puget Systems' results are from September 2025 [src2].
• Compute Market's AMD tok/s figures are compiled from community reports, which it flags as needing verification, and its claim that the 24 GB RX 7900 XTX runs a 70B model at Q4 conflicts with its own main guide, which puts a 70B model at about 35-40 GB at Q4; this card uses neither [src8, src7].
• A used RTX 3090 has no warranty and, XDA says, almost certainly needs new thermal pads [src6].
• The report that NVIDIA has stopped making the RTX 5090 is unverified; NVIDIA had not responded to Tom's Hardware [src11].