NVIDIA RTX 4500 Ada vs RTX 5000 Ada: 24 GB at 210 W or 32 GB at 250 W in the same format

RTX 4500 Ada vs RTX 5000 Ada in one table

The NVIDIA RTX 4500 Ada Generation and the NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation come in one format: both are 4.4 in high and 10.5 in long in two slots, with the same power connector, outputs and video engines. The RTX 5000 Ada has 32 GB of memory against 24 GB, 12,800 CUDA cores against 7,680 and 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth against 432, and it draws 250 W against 210 W. It is also the only one of the two on NVIDIA's vGPU list. We supply both cards to companies across the EU.

NVIDIA datasheets 2895216 (October 2023) and 2898211 (August 2023); connector from NVIDIA's quick start guide for RTX Ada cards; vGPU supported-GPU list (2 October 2026); MIG User Guide (4 November 2026); "CUDA GPU Compute Capability" page (16 October 2026); NVIDIA's "Compare Professional Laptop GPUs" page.

The card sheets are in the RTX 4500 Ada specs and the RTX 5000 Ada specs.

Same slot, same connector, same outputs

The rows that decide whether a card fits a given workstation are the same on both. Height, length and slot width match, both cards cool actively, and both link at PCIe 4.0 x16. NVIDIA's quick start guide names the same 16-pin PCIe CEM5 connector for both and lists the same adapter from two 8-pin PCIe cables in each box.

The display side is identical too: four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs for four displays at 4096 × 2160 and 120 Hz, four at 5120 × 2880 and 60 Hz, or two at 7680 × 4320 and 60 Hz. Each card has two encoders and two decoders with AV1 in both directions, and NVIDIA's support matrix of 16 October 2026 lists both with an unrestricted number of NVENC sessions. Both datasheets carry the Mosaic line, both give NVLink as "No", and for the sync board the same remark applies to both: NVIDIA's datasheet and its RTX PRO Sync page list the card as compatible; the sync table in the 621.14 driver release notes does not.

The newest drivers of the branches R580, R595 and R620 list both cards, and NVIDIA announced them on the same day, 8 August 2023.

In a workstation that already runs one of the two, the other card therefore goes into the same slots with the same cables. What has to be checked is the power budget: 40 W more per card for the RTX 5000 Ada. NVIDIA publishes no power-supply wattage for either card. If you plan such a swap or a mixed fleet, send us the workstation models and the number of cards of each kind, and we reply with a written quote within one business day.

How far the cards are apart in NVIDIA's figures

Both cards belong to the Ada generation, so their core counts and their datasheet rates can be set against each other. By our arithmetic the RTX 5000 Ada has:

• 67 per cent more CUDA cores, and the same ratio in Tensor and RT Cores;
• 65 per cent more in each of the three TFLOPS rows;
• 33 per cent more memory and 33 per cent more memory bandwidth, on a 256-bit interface against a 192-bit one;
• 19 per cent more board power.

NVIDIA footnotes the single-precision figures as peak rates at the GPU's boost clock and the Tensor figures as effective FP8 rates with sparsity. None of the three rows is a measured rate. How much of the 65 per cent arrives in an application depends on the application, and the section on measurements below shows how little has been published for this exact pair.

Compute grows about twice as fast as memory bandwidth between the two cards. For work that mainly reads memory, the step is closer to a third; for work that mainly computes, closer to two thirds. That is our reading of the datasheet rows and no measurement.

What 8 GB more memory loads

For rendering, memory is a hard limit. Chaos writes for V-Ray GPU that the entire scene has to fit into GPU memory, and that with cards of different memory sizes the scene should fit the card with the least memory. A scene that outgrows 24 GB therefore needs the RTX 5000 Ada, and a pair made of one card of each kind is limited by the 24 GB card.

For language models, our sizing rule gives the two cards budgets of 18.5 and 25.7 GiB for model weights plus KV cache. The rule takes 0.9 times the memory the driver reports and subtracts 3 GiB; the reported memory is scaled from the 95.6 GiB the driver shows on the 96 GB card. That scaling is an assumption, and the driver on the delivered card decides.

file sizes of the publishers' repositories on Hugging Face, read 10 November 2026; fit by our sizing rule with budgets of 18.5 and 25.7 GiB. "Tight" means the weights are above our budget and within 0.9 times the memory the driver reports, which is 28.7 GiB on a 32 GB card by our scaling.

Devstral Small 2 24B Instruct in FP8, a 24.02 GiB file, is a second example that fits only the 32 GB card. A file in the "tight" class is above our budget, and we do not plan on it. Both cards compute FP8 and have no FP4 hardware acceleration. Our article on AI on the RTX 5000 Ada and RTX 4500 Ada goes through more files and the image models.

For CAD and visualisation software the makers' memory figures do not separate the two cards. A 16 GB card already meets every memory figure on the makers' pages we read on 10 November 2026, so both lie above them.

vGPU is listed for the RTX 5000 Ada only

NVIDIA's vGPU supported-GPU list of 2 October 2026 includes the RTX 5000 Ada from release 16.1 with full support. The RTX 4500 Ada is not on the list, and its datasheet has no vGPU row. For a host that shares one card among several virtual workstations, that settles the choice between the two.

Two details belong to this. The display outputs of the RTX 5000 Ada are on by default and have to be turned off when vGPU software is used. And NVIDIA's vGPU guide says that in pass-through deployments all GPUs that support vGPU software are supported; of these two cards that sentence covers the RTX 5000 Ada, and NVIDIA documents nothing comparable for the RTX 4500 Ada. MIG is no way out for either card: NVIDIA's MIG guide of 4 November 2026 contains no Ada card. Our overview of MIG and vGPU on RTX PRO and RTX Ada cards lists every card.

What has been measured for this pair

No source we use states a measured ratio between the RTX 4500 Ada and the RTX 5000 Ada. Three published sets of numbers contain both cards, and each has a limit.

SPEC's results summary of SPECapc for SolidWorks 2024, updated 26 November 2024, has the RTX 4500 Ada in a Dell Precision 3680 with a Core i9-14900K and the RTX 5000 Ada in a BOXX APEXX A3_06 with a Ryzen 9 9950X. At Full HD without anti-aliasing the GPU composites are 5.51 and 5.98. The two workstations differ in more than the card, so the gap belongs to the systems.

Blender Open Data, read 10 November 2026, shows medians of 5,673.65 samples per minute over 5 submissions for the RTX 4500 Ada and 5,677.13 over 9 submissions for the RTX 5000 Ada, both with Blender 4.5.0. The two values are practically equal, which the datasheets do not suggest. The database is crowd-sourced and pools OptiX and CUDA runs, and with so few submissions the medians cannot rank the two cards.

Puget Systems' professional GPU roundup of 18 December 2025 tested both cards, but its text states only how far each RTX PRO Blackwell card is ahead of the Ada card of the same number. Our comparisons of the RTX 4500 Ada with the RTX PRO 4500 and 4000 Blackwell and of the RTX 5000 Ada with the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell use those results.

RTX 5000 Ada with 16 GB is the laptop GPU

NVIDIA uses the name RTX 5000 Ada Generation for a laptop GPU as well. That GPU has 16 GB, 9,728 CUDA cores and 80 to 175 W, and it was announced on 21 March 2023, before the desktop card. A listing or a benchmark row with 16 GB is therefore not the 32 GB PCIe card, and the laptop GPU has less memory than the desktop RTX 4500 Ada. The RTX 4500 Ada has no laptop namesake: NVIDIA's laptop Ada series contains no 4500.

RTX 4500 Ada vs RTX 4000 Ada, one step down

Below both cards stands the NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada Generation: 20 GB of GDDR6 with ECC at 360 GB/s, 6,144 CUDA cores, 26.7 TFLOPS in single precision and 130 W in a single slot of 4.4 × 9.5 in, according to NVIDIA's product page and its line card of March 2025. Against it the RTX 4500 Ada has 4 GB more memory, 25 per cent more CUDA cores and 20 per cent more bandwidth by our arithmetic, at 80 W more and twice the slot width. The single-slot card and its Blackwell counterpart are the subject of our RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell vs RTX 4000 Ada comparison.

RTX 4500 Ada or RTX 5000 Ada, by use

• A CAD or visualisation seat. Start from the software maker's list. Dassault's SOLIDWORKS 2026 certification list, read 10 November 2026, has rows with desktop workstations for both cards; a row covers one computer model with one particular card and one particular driver. Where the list allows both and 24 GB is enough, the RTX 4500 Ada saves 40 W per seat; ordering is described on the page to buy the RTX 4500 Ada.
• GPU rendering with scenes above 24 GB. The RTX 5000 Ada, because the scene has to fit the memory of each card: buy the RTX 5000 Ada.
• Virtual workstations. The RTX 5000 Ada, the only one of the two on the vGPU list.
• Local AI. The RTX 5000 Ada where the model file lies between 18.5 and 25.7 GiB, the RTX 4500 Ada below that.
• Several cards in one tower. Four RTX 4500 Ada add up to 840 W of board power, four RTX 5000 Ada to 1,000 W. Our page to buy an RTX Ada workstation covers such towers.
• A new order without ties to Ada. Look at the RTX PRO Blackwell cards with 24 and 32 GB first; the Blackwell vs Ada overview shows the pairs.

Owners of the older RTX A4500 and RTX A5000 find the step to these two cards in our comparison of the RTX 4500 Ada and 5000 Ada with the RTX A4500 and A5000, and readers who came from a GeForce comparison in RTX 5000 Ada and 4500 Ada vs RTX 4090 and 4080. If the case is not on this list, describe the application and the largest scene or model you expect; the first consultation is free, and the quote names the card that fits.

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