readygpu

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 vs AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

For running models locally, priced in Canada. At 32k context the first runs 26 models fully in memory, the second 26.

In short

Both have 24 GB of memory for models; the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 has 936 GB/s of bandwidth and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX 960 GB/s. At 32k context both run the same 26 models we track fully in memory. On the models both run fully in memory, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 is about 1.1× as fast as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (estimated, median across models).

Updated . Speeds are estimates; how they are worked out.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090

$2,800

Amazon

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AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

Not priced here

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Specifications

SpecNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
GPUGeForce RTX 3090Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Memory24 GB GDDR6X24 GB GDDR6
Memory bus384-bit384-bit
Memory bandwidth936 GB/s960 GB/s
FP16 compute71 TFLOPS123 TFLOPS
SoftwareCUDAROCm
Board power350 W355 W
PCIe generationGen 4Gen 4
PCIe lanesx16x16

What each runs

Estimated decode speed with the most precise quant that fits each one est.

ModelNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Qwen 3.8 27B26tok/sUD-Q5_K_M24tok/sUD-Q5_K_M
Qwen 3.6 27B27tok/sQ5_K_M24tok/sQ5_K_M
Gemma 4 31B27tok/sQ4_K_M24tok/sQ4_K_M
Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B135tok/sUD-Q4_K_M123tok/sUD-Q4_K_M
Qwen 3.5 27B27tok/sQ5_K_M24tok/sQ5_K_M
Gemma 4 26B-A4B78tok/sUD-Q6_K76tok/sUD-Q5_K_M
Qwen 3.5 35B-A3B135tok/sQ4_K_M123tok/sQ4_K_M
GLM 4.7 Flash65tok/sQ5_K_M60tok/sQ5_K_M
Devstral Small 2 24B26tok/sQ5_K_M24tok/sQ5_K_M
gpt-oss 20B108tok/sMXFP498tok/sMXFP4
Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B69tok/sQ4_K_M63tok/sQ4_K_M
Gemma 4 12B43tok/sQ8_039tok/sQ8_0
Qwen 3.5 9B55tok/sQ8_050tok/sQ8_0
Mistral Small 3.2 24B26tok/sQ5_K_M24tok/sQ5_K_M
Gemma 3 27B26tok/sQ5_K_M24tok/sQ5_K_M
Ministral 3 14B29tok/sQ8_027tok/sQ8_0
Qwen3 14B28tok/sQ8_025tok/sQ8_0
DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B43tok/sQ8_039tok/sQ8_0
Qwen3 8B43tok/sQ8_039tok/sQ8_0
Phi-4 14B26tok/sQ8_024tok/sQ8_0
Qwen 3.5 4B104tok/sQ8_094tok/sQ8_0
Ministral 3 8B43tok/sQ8_039tok/sQ8_0
Granite 4.2 8B39tok/sQ8_036tok/sQ8_0
Gemma 4 E4B63tok/sQ8_058tok/sQ8_0
LFM2.5 8B-A1B130tok/sQ8_0118tok/sQ8_0
Llama 3.1 8B53tok/sQ6_K49tok/sQ6_K
Qwen 3.5 122B-A10Boffloadoffload
Qwen3 Coder Nextoffloadoffload
Mistral Small 4 119Boffloadoffload
GLM 4.5 Airoffloadoffload
Qwen3 Next 80B-A3Boffloadoffload
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3Boffloadoffload
Kimi Linear 48B-A3Boffloadoffload
Qwen3 32Boffloadoffload
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32Boffloadoffload
DeepSeek V4 Flashwon't runwon't run
GLM 5.3 Flashwon't runwon't run
Qwen 3.8 Flash Nextwon't runwon't run
MiniMax M2.7won't runwon't run
Nemotron 3 Super 120B-A12Bwon't runwon't run
gpt-oss 120Bwon't runwon't run
Llama 3.3 70Bwon't runwon't run

Questions

Which is better for local AI, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 or the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX?
Choose the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 for speed.
Which can run bigger models, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 or the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX?
At 32k context both run the same 26 models we track fully in memory.
Which is faster for local AI, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 or the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX?
On the models both run fully in memory, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 is about 1.1× as fast as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (estimated, median across models).

More comparisons