RTX 4070 Super 12GB vs RTX 5090 32GB for Local LLMs
The RTX 5090 32GB has about 256% more memory bandwidth (1,792 vs 504 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 256% faster on the RTX 5090 32GB. The RTX 5090 32GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 38 vs 18 of 61 models (32 vs 12 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the RTX 5090 32GB but not the RTX 4070 Super 12GB: Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 (46.7B). MSRP is $599 for the RTX 4070 Super 12GB vs $1,999 for the RTX 5090 32GB. 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 (40 shared models), the RTX 5090 32GB posts the higher tok/s in 40 rows vs 0. Methodology.