RTX 5090VSNVIDIA L40s
AI Benchmark Battle 2026
RTX 5090
Blackwell32GB
$1,999-2200
Consumer
Flagship
NVIDIA L40s
Ada Lovelace48GB
$8,000-10000
Enterprise
Professional
LLM Inference
| Model | RTX 5090 | NVIDIA L40s | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
Typhoon2.5-Qwen3-4BHigher is better | 1,446tok/s | 1,523tok/s | NVIDIA L40s |
GPT-OSS-20BHigher is better | 1,338tok/s | 910tok/s | RTX 5090 |
Qwen3-4B-Instruct-FP8Higher is better | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Vision-Language
| Model | RTX 5090 | NVIDIA L40s | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
Qwen3-VL-4BHigher is better | 1,005tok/s | 1,050tok/s | NVIDIA L40s |
Qwen3-VL-8BHigher is better | 868tok/s | 746tok/s | RTX 5090 |
Typhoon-OCR-3BHigher is better | 1,577tok/s | 2,419tok/s | NVIDIA L40s |
Image Generation
| Model | RTX 5090 | NVIDIA L40s | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
Qwen-ImageLower is better | 46.00sec | 102.00sec | RTX 5090 |
Qwen-Image-EditLower is better | 50.00sec | 104.00sec | RTX 5090 |
Video Generation
| Model | RTX 5090 | NVIDIA L40s | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
Wan2.2-5BLower is better | 344.00sec | 412.00sec | RTX 5090 |
Wan2.2-14BLower is better | 903.00sec | 940.00sec | RTX 5090 |
Speech-to-Text
| Model | RTX 5090 | NVIDIA L40s | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
Typhoon-ASRHigher is better | 0.324xx realtime | 0.364xx realtime | NVIDIA L40s |
Winner Analysis
Deep dive into why each GPU performs differently based on technical specifications
Technical Analysis Summary
RTX 5090 wins 6 out of 10 benchmarks, excelling in Image Generation and Video Generation. Its exceptional memory bandwidth provides a decisive advantage for AI inference workloads.
Key Differentiators
- RTX 5090 uses Blackwell architecture while NVIDIA L40s uses Ada Lovelace
- RTX 5090 features next-gen GDDR7 memory
- RTX 5090 offers consumer pricing vs NVIDIA L40s's enterprise cost
LLM Inference
Both GPUs perform similarly for LLM inference tasks, making either a suitable choice depending on your budget and availability requirements.
Vision-Language
NVIDIA L40s excels at vision-language tasks due to more VRAM (48GB) handles larger image batches efficiently, and 4th Gen Tensor Cores accelerate cross-attention between visual and text features.
Image Generation
RTX 5090 leads in image generation because faster memory enables quicker diffusion iterations, and Blackwell architecture optimizations accelerate denoising operations.
Video Generation
RTX 5090 dominates video generation with 1.8TB/s bandwidth handles high-throughput video data, and large VRAM capacity enables running advanced video generation models.
Speech-to-Text
NVIDIA L40s excels at speech-to-text because 4th Gen Tensor Cores accelerate attention-based speech recognition.
Technical Specifications
RTX 5090
NVIDIA L40s
Overall Winner
RTX 5090
6 wins out of 10 benchmarks
6
RTX 5090
4
NVIDIA L40s
RTX 5090 Advantages
- Significantly lower cost
- Easier availability
- Dominates in Image Generation
- Dominates in Video Generation
NVIDIA L40s Advantages
- More VRAM (48GB vs 32GB)
- Strong in Vision-Language
- Dominates in Speech-to-Text
Frequently Asked Questions
RTX 5090 outperforms NVIDIA L40s in 6 out of 10 AI benchmarks. The RTX 5090's Blackwell architecture introduces 5th generation Tensor Cores with enhanced AI processing capabilities and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation. With 1.8 TB/s memory bandwidth and 32GB GDDR7 memory, it delivers superior throughput for AI inference workloads.
RTX 5090 has 32GB of GDDR7 memory with 1.8 TB/s bandwidth. NVIDIA L40s has 48GB of GDDR6 memory with 864 GB/s bandwidth. Higher memory bandwidth generally results in faster token generation for large language models.
Both GPUs perform similarly for LLM inference. RTX 5090 (Blackwell, 1.8 TB/s) and NVIDIA L40s (Ada Lovelace, 864 GB/s) achieve comparable tokens per second in our benchmarks.
RTX 5090 has a TDP of 575W while NVIDIA L40s has a TDP of 350W. NVIDIA L40s is more power efficient, making it suitable for deployments with power constraints. For cloud deployments, consider Float16.cloud where you can access these GPUs without managing power infrastructure.
RTX 5090 is priced around $1,999-2200 (consumer market), while NVIDIA L40s costs approximately $8,000-10000 (enterprise/datacenter). Note that RTX 5090 is a consumer GPU while NVIDIA L40s is an enterprise solution with different support and warranty terms.