NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 vs AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

For running models locally, priced in Canada. At 8k context the first runs 16 models fully in memory, the second 23.

In short

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT has more memory for models: 20 GB against 16 GB. At 8k context the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT runs 23 of the models we track fully in memory and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16; only the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT holds Qwen 3.8 27B. On the models both run fully in memory, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is about 1.4× as fast as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (estimated, median across models). In Canada the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 costs $2,370 at Amazon and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT $2,175 at Amazon: the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is $195 cheaper.

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

Specifications

SpecNVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
GPUGeForce RTX 5080Radeon RX 7900 XT
Memory16 GB GDDR720 GB GDDR6
Memory bus256-bit320-bit
Memory bandwidth960 GB/s800 GB/s
FP16 compute113 TFLOPS103 TFLOPS
SoftwareCUDAROCm
Board power360 W315 W
PCIe generationGen 5Gen 4
PCIe lanesx16x16

What each runs

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

ModelNVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
Qwen 3.8 27Boffload26tok/sUD-Q4_K_M
Qwen 3.6 27Boffload25tok/sQ4_K_M
Qwen 3.5 27Boffload25tok/sQ4_K_M
Gemma 4 26B-A4Boffload88tok/sUD-Q4_K_M
Devstral Small 2 24B38tok/sQ4_K_M24tok/sQ5_K_M
GLM 4.7 Flashoffload76tok/sQ4_K_M
gpt-oss 20B136tok/sMXFP4100tok/sMXFP4
Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3Boffload100tok/sQ4_K_M
Gemma 4 12B45tok/sQ8_034tok/sQ8_0
Qwen 3.5 9B60tok/sQ8_045tok/sQ8_0
Mistral Small 3.2 24B38tok/sQ4_K_M24tok/sQ5_K_M
Gemma 3 27Boffload25tok/sQ4_K_M
Qwen3 14B44tok/sQ6_K26tok/sQ8_0
Ministral 3 14B38tok/sQ8_028tok/sQ8_0
DeepSeek R1 0528 Qwen3 8B60tok/sQ8_044tok/sQ8_0
Qwen3 8B60tok/sQ8_044tok/sQ8_0
Phi-4 14B43tok/sQ6_K26tok/sQ8_0
Qwen 3.5 4B124tok/sQ8_092tok/sQ8_0
Ministral 3 8B59tok/sQ8_043tok/sQ8_0
Granite 4.2 8B56tok/sQ8_041tok/sQ8_0
Gemma 4 E4B70tok/sQ8_052tok/sQ8_0
LFM2.5 8B-A1B244tok/sQ8_0180tok/sQ8_0
Llama 3.1 8B78tok/sQ6_K57tok/sQ6_K
Qwen 3.5 122B-A10Boffloadoffload
Gemma 4 31Boffloadoffload
Mistral Small 4 119Boffloadoffload
Qwen 3.6 35B-A3Boffloadoffload
GLM 4.5 Airwon't runoffload
Qwen 3.5 35B-A3Boffloadoffload
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3Boffloadoffload
Kimi Linear 48B-A3Boffloadoffload
Qwen3 32Boffloadoffload
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32Boffloadoffload
Llama 3.3 70Bwon't runoffload
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
Qwen3 Coder Nextwon't runwon't run
gpt-oss 120Bwon't runwon't run
Qwen3 Next 80B-A3Bwon't runwon't run

Questions

Which is better for local AI, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 or the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT?
Choose the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT to run bigger models. Choose the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 for speed. Choose the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT to spend less.
Which can run bigger models, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 or the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT?
At 8k context the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT runs 23 of the models we track fully in memory and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16; only the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT holds Qwen 3.8 27B.
Which is faster for local AI, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 or the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT?
On the models both run fully in memory, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is about 1.4× as fast as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (estimated, median across models).
What is the price difference between the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT?
In Canada the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 costs $2,370 at Amazon and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT $2,175 at Amazon: the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is $195 cheaper.

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