L40S 48GB vs RTX 3090 Ti 24GB for Local LLMs

The RTX 3090 Ti 24GB has about 17% more memory bandwidth (1,008 vs 864 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 17% faster on the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB. The L40S 48GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 39 vs 33 of 61 models (48 vs 24 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the L40S 48GB but not the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB: Qwen3-Coder-Next (79.7B). MSRP is $8,000 for the L40S 48GB vs $1,999 for the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB. MSRP is a launch list price, not live retail — Amazon prices move; click through for the current price. In the Q4/8K head-to-head below (47 shared models), the RTX 3090 Ti 24GB posts the higher tok/s in 38 rows vs 9. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	L40S 48GB	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Vendor	NVIDIA	NVIDIA
VRAM	48 GB	24 GB
Memory type	GDDR6	GDDR6X
Memory bandwidth	864 GB/s	1,008 GB/s
TDP	350 W	450 W
MSRP (list)	$8,000	$1,999
Buy	Search Amazon (affiliate)	Search Amazon (affiliate)

MSRP is the launch list price, not live retail. Buy links are Amazon affiliate links — the price after you click is the live price.

Q4 / 8K head-to-head — top 15 of 47 shared models

Model	Params (B)	L40S 48GB tok/s	L40S 48GB fits	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB tok/s	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	687.3 est.	Yes	801.8 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	549.8 est.	Yes	641.5 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	562.3 est.	No	164.0 est.	No	L40S 48GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	458.2 est.	Yes	534.5 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	274.9 est.	Yes	320.7 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	183.3 est.	Yes	213.8 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	183.3 est.	Yes	213.8 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	183.3 est.	Yes	213.8 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	183.3 est.	Yes	213.8 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	171.8 est.	Yes	200.5 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	183.3 est.	Yes	170.4 est.	No	L40S 48GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	152.7 est.	Yes	178.2 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	144.7 est.	Yes	168.8 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	144.7 est.	Yes	168.8 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	141.0 est.	Yes	164.5 est.	Yes	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB

est. = bandwidth-based estimate; measured = curated real benchmark that overrides the estimate. Fits = weights + KV(8K) + 1 GB overhead ≤ 95% of VRAM.

Fit coverage at Q4 / 8K

	L40S 48GB	RTX 3090 Ti 24GB
Catalog models that fit	39 of 61	33 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	Qwen3-Coder-Next (79.7B)	—

L40S 48GB details → · RTX 3090 Ti 24GB details →