Comparison · Two 48 GB cards, one built for data centres

# L40S or RTX A6000?

Both are dedicated, both are monthly, both open without an identity check. What separates them is memory, bandwidth and $428 a month — and which of those matters depends entirely on what you intend to run.

- $714/mo L40S, one card
- $286/mo RTX A6000, one card
- 48 vs 48 GB memory per card
- 1.1× bandwidth gap

## The short answer

Which one, and when

- **Pick the L40S:** when throughput matters. Same 48 GB, but 13% more memory bandwidth — which is what sets generation speed — for $428/month more.
- **Pick the RTX A6000:** when the L40S offers you nothing you need. Same memory, comparable bandwidth, $428/month cheaper.
- **Neither, if:** your model does not fit on a single card of either. Sharding costs synchronisation at every layer — see the [interconnect guide](https://gpuserver.io/guides/nvlink-vs-pcie) before buying a multi-GPU node.

## Side by side

**L40S compared with RTX A6000**

|  | [L40S](https://gpuserver.io/gpu/l40s) | [RTX A6000](https://gpuserver.io/gpu/rtx-a6000) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | Ampere | Ada Lovelace is a different generation |
| Memory per card | 48 GB GDDR6 ECC | 48 GB GDDR6 ECC | Identical |
| Memory bandwidth Predicts generation speed | 864 GB/s | 768 GB/s | 1.13× in favour of the L40S |
| Form factor | PCIe add-in card | PCIe add-in card | Same |
| Node sizes | 1×, 2×, 4×, 8× | 1×, 2×, 4×, 8× | Up to 384 GB in one node |
| From, per month | $714 | $286 | $428/month apart |

## Price at every node size

**Monthly price of both cards at each available node size**

| Node | L40S | RTX A6000 | Total VRAM |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 × GPU | $714/mo | $286/mo | 48 GB / 48 GB | [L40S](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=l40s-x1) [RTX A6000](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=a6000-x1) |
| 2 × GPU | $1,427/mo | $597/mo | 96 GB / 96 GB | [L40S](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=l40s-x2) [RTX A6000](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=a6000-x2) |
| 4 × GPU | $2,754/mo | $1,163/mo | 192 GB / 192 GB | [L40S](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=l40s-x4) [RTX A6000](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=a6000-x4) |
| 8 × GPU | $5,251/mo | $2,239/mo | 384 GB / 384 GB | [L40S](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=l40s-x8) [RTX A6000](https://gpuserver.io/configure?c=a6000-x8) |

## 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 L40S

Nothing. Every model the L40S holds on one card, the RTX A6000 holds too — the difference between them is speed, not capability.

### Only the RTX A6000

Nothing. The L40S holds everything the RTX A6000 does.

**The same model on both: Llama 3.3 70B.** On the L40S, roughly 11 tokens/second at 4-bit (AWQ, GPTQ); on the RTX A6000, roughly 10. 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 month | Better at |
|---|---|---|---|
| [L40S](https://gpuserver.io/gpu/l40s) | $14.88 | $714 | Neither |
| [RTX A6000](https://gpuserver.io/gpu/rtx-a6000) | $5.96 | $286 | Both ratios |

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.

## L40S against RTX A6000, in short

Is the L40S worth the extra money over the RTX A6000?

It costs $428 more a month — 150% — for 13% 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 L40S has 864 GB/s against 768 GB/s, so the L40S leads by roughly 13% on a model both of them hold.

Do both come as multi-GPU nodes?

L40S: 1×, 2×, 4×, 8×. RTX A6000: 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

- [A100 PCIe vs L40S  HBM against GDDR, at similar money Compare](https://gpuserver.io/compare/a100-80gb-vs-l40s)

## 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.

[Open the configurator](https://gpuserver.io/configure) [Read the guides](https://gpuserver.io/guides)

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Source: https://gpuserver.io/compare/l40s-vs-rtx-a6000/. This file is generated from the same data as the website; if a figure here differs from a page, the page is authoritative and this file is stale — the canonical source is https://gpuserver.io/.