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Comparison · HBM against GDDR, at similar money

A100 PCIe or L40S?

Both are dedicated, both are monthly, both open without an identity check. What separates them is memory, bandwidth and $377 a month — and which of those matters depends entirely on what you intend to run.

  • $1,091/moA100 PCIe, one card
  • $714/moL40S, one card
  • 80 vs 48 GBmemory per card
  • 2.2×bandwidth gap

The short answer

Which one, and when

Pick the A100 PCIe
when your model needs more than 48 GB on a single card. That is a threshold, not a preference — below it, the extra $377/month buys you nothing.
Pick the L40S
when 48 GB holds your model. It saves $377/month, and memory you do not use is memory you paid for.
Neither, if
your model does not fit on a single card of either. Sharding costs synchronisation at every layer — see the interconnect guide before buying a multi-GPU node.

Side by side

A100 PCIe compared with L40S
A100 PCIe L40S Difference
ArchitectureAmpereAda Lovelace Ampere is a different generation
Memory per card 80 GB HBM2e 48 GB GDDR6 ECC 32 GB in favour of the A100 PCIe
Memory bandwidthPredicts generation speed 1,935 GB/s 864 GB/s 2.24× in favour of the A100 PCIe
Form factor PCIe add-in card PCIe add-in card Same
Node sizes 1×, 2×, 4×, 8× 1×, 2×, 4×, 8× Up to 640 GB in one node
From, per month $1,091 $714 $377/month apart

Price at every node size

Monthly price of both cards at each available node size
NodeA100 PCIeL40STotal VRAM
1 × GPU $1,091/mo $714/mo 80 GB / 48 GB A100 PCIe L40S
2 × GPU $2,159/mo $1,427/mo 160 GB / 96 GB A100 PCIe L40S
4 × GPU $4,157/mo $2,754/mo 320 GB / 192 GB A100 PCIe L40S
8 × GPU $7,906/mo $5,251/mo 640 GB / 384 GB A100 PCIe L40S

What each one holds on a single card

At 8k context, best precision that fits. This is the difference that decides a purchase — not the specification sheet.

Only the A100 PCIe

Nothing. Every model the A100 PCIe holds on one card, the L40S holds too — the difference between them is speed, not capability.

Only the L40S

Nothing. The A100 PCIe holds everything the L40S does.

The same model on both: Llama 3.3 70B. On the A100 PCIe, roughly 25 tokens/second at 4-bit (AWQ, GPTQ); on the L40S, roughly 11. Single-stream and deliberately conservative — with continuous batching the aggregate is several times higher on both. Treat the ratio as the useful number, not the absolute.

Cost per GB and per TB/s

Two ratios that cut through the specification sheet. The first tells you what memory costs; the second what speed costs.

Cost per gigabyte of VRAM and per terabyte per second of bandwidth
Card$/GB of VRAM, per month$/TB per second, per monthBetter at
A100 PCIe $13.64 $564 Both ratios
L40S $14.88 $714 Neither

These ratios rank cards; they do not choose one. A card that is cheaper per gigabyte is worthless if it has too few gigabytes to hold your model at all — capacity is a threshold, not a slope. Use them to break a tie between two cards that both fit.

A100 PCIe against L40S, in short

Is the A100 PCIe worth the extra money over the L40S?
It costs $377 more a month — 53% — for 32 GB more memory and 124% more memory bandwidth. Both hold the same set of models on a single card, so the difference is speed rather than capability.
Which one is faster for LLM inference?
Generation speed is bounded by memory bandwidth, because each token requires re-reading the active weights. The A100 PCIe has 1,935 GB/s against 864 GB/s, so the A100 PCIe leads by roughly 124% on a model both of them hold.
Do both come as multi-GPU nodes?
A100 PCIe: 1×, 2×, 4×, 8×. L40S: 1×, 2×, 4×, 8×. Both are PCIe cards, joined peer-to-peer over the bus rather than by NVLink.
Can I rent either without an identity check?
Yes, both, on the same terms. No document, no selfie, no phone number and no company registration, at any level of spend. Payment is in cryptocurrency, each invoice gets its own address, and root access arrives under 5 minutes after the first confirmation.

Other comparisons

Both are racked and waiting, in all 6 data centres.

Whichever you pick, it is monthly, paid in crypto, opened without an identity check and delivered in under 5 minutes.

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