NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada and RTX 4500 Ada vs GeForce RTX 4090 and 4080 in published figures

RTX 5000 Ada and RTX 4500 Ada among the GeForce RTX 40 cards

NVIDIA names no GeForce equivalent of the NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation or the NVIDIA RTX 4500 Ada Generation. By NVIDIA's published figures the RTX 5000 Ada (12,800 CUDA cores, 32 GB, 250 W) lies between the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER (10,240 cores, 16 GB, 320 W) and the RTX 4090 (16,384 cores, 24 GB, 450 W). For the RTX 4500 Ada the GeForce card of the same generation closest in CUDA cores is the RTX 4070 Ti (7,680 cores, 12 GB, 285 W), against 7,680 cores, 24 GB and 210 W for the professional card.

All six cards in the table are of the Ada Lovelace generation, so their core counts can stand side by side. Every figure is NVIDIA's. The pairing is ours: no NVIDIA document we read sets these cards against each other, and none names a chip for either line.

NVIDIA datasheets 2898211 (August 2023) for the RTX 5000 Ada and 2895216 (October 2023) for the RTX 4500 Ada; NVIDIA's "Compare Current and Previous GeForce Series of Graphics Cards" page, read 10 November 2026, for the GeForce cards; encoder and decoder counts from NVIDIA's Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix of 16 October 2026.

RTX 5000 Ada vs RTX 4090 and RTX 4080

Against the RTX 4090 the RTX 5000 Ada has fewer CUDA cores and more memory. The counts are 12,800 and 16,384, which is 22 per cent fewer by our arithmetic, and the memory is 32 GB with ECC against 24 GB. NVIDIA lists the RTX 4090 at 450 W, 1.8 times the 250 W of the professional card.

Against the RTX 4080 SUPER the core counts stand the other way round: 12,800 against 10,240, or 25 per cent more. The RTX 4080 SUPER has 16 GB, half the memory of the RTX 5000 Ada, and is listed at 320 W. The RTX 4080 without the SUPER suffix is listed with 9,728 cores, 16 GB and 320 W.

No GeForce RTX 40 card has 32 GB. By power the two nearest rows are the RTX 4070 SUPER at 220 W and the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER at 285 W, with 7,168 and 8,448 cores and 12 and 16 GB. A core count describes how a chip is configured; with power figures this far apart, no ratio of speed should be read from it.

RTX 4500 Ada vs RTX 4090 and RTX 4070 Ti

The RTX 4500 Ada and the RTX 4090 share one figure, 24 GB of memory. The other rows differ: 7,680 CUDA cores against 16,384, which is less than half, and 210 W against 450 W.

By core count the RTX 4500 Ada matches the RTX 4070 Ti exactly, since both are published with 7,680. The GeForce card has 12 GB, half the memory, and is listed at 285 W, 75 W above the professional card. By power the nearest rows are the RTX 4070 at 200 W and the RTX 4070 SUPER at 220 W, with 5,888 and 7,168 cores and 12 GB each.

An identical core count is a published figure and no statement by NVIDIA that two cards are the same product.

The desktop RTX 5000 Ada and the laptop GPU of the same name

Searches for a "desktop equivalent" often start from a notebook. NVIDIA uses the name RTX 5000 Ada Generation for a laptop GPU as well, and that GPU has 16 GB, 9,728 CUDA cores and 80 to 175 W. The desktop card of this page has 32 GB, 12,800 cores and 250 W. A benchmark or a certification row for one cannot be carried over to the other. NVIDIA's laptop series has no RTX 4500 Ada.

Tests that include these cards

Neither Puget Systems nor StorageReview has, in the articles we read, tested the RTX 5000 Ada or the RTX 4500 Ada against a GeForce card, so we print no speed figure and no ranking. Puget Systems' LLM inference article of 22 August 2024 and its professional GPU roundup of 18 December 2025 include both Ada cards and no GeForce card. The one test we read with an RTX 4090 beside a professional Ada card is StorageReview's review of the RTX PRO 6000 Workstation Edition of 7 October 2025; the Ada card in it is the 48 GB RTX 6000 Ada, a class above the two cards here, and our RTX PRO 6000 vs RTX 5090 comparison draws on that review.

Two slots and 250 W against three slots and 450 W

NVIDIA datasheets 2898211 and 2895216; power connector and adapter from NVIDIA's quick start guide for RTX Ada cards; NVIDIA's GeForce comparison page, read 10 November 2026. The GeForce sizes are those of NVIDIA's Founders Edition.

The two professional cards share one board format: 4.4 in high and 10.5 in long (about 112 by 267 mm, converted), two slots, active cooling, PCIe 4.0 x16. NVIDIA's Founders Edition of the RTX 4090 and of the RTX 4080 SUPER is listed at 304 by 137 mm in three slots, which is longer, taller and one slot wider.

The Ada datasheets have no power-connector row. NVIDIA's quick start guide for the RTX Ada cards names a 16-pin PCIe CEM5 connector and lists an adapter from two 8-pin PCIe cables in the box. The GeForce page lists the RTX 4090 and the RTX 4080 SUPER with three 8-pin PCIe cables through the adapter in the box, or one PCIe Gen 5 cable of 450 W or more. It also prints a "Required System Power" of 850 W for the RTX 4090 and 750 W for the RTX 4080 SUPER. NVIDIA gives that figure for the test system it names, a PC with a Ryzen 9 5900X processor; it is no general recommendation. For the professional cards NVIDIA publishes no power-supply figure.

By our arithmetic two RTX 5000 Ada take four slot widths and up to 500 W, while two RTX 4090 Founders Edition cards take six slot widths and up to 900 W.

The professional cards have four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and no HDMI output; the quick start guide lists one DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter in the box. The GeForce RTX 40 cards have three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and one HDMI 2.1a output. Either side drives up to four displays.

We supply the RTX 5000 Ada and the RTX 4500 Ada across the EU; tell us the workstation model and how many cards it should take and we reply with a written quote within one business day. The full sheets are in our RTX 5000 Ada specs and RTX 4500 Ada specs, and the two cards are set against each other in RTX 4500 Ada vs RTX 5000 Ada.

What NVIDIA documents for the Ada cards and not for GeForce

NVIDIA datasheets 2898211 and 2895216; NVIDIA's desktop line-up page (8 September 2026); NVIDIA's driver download page; Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix (16 October 2026); vGPU supported-GPU list (2 October 2026); RTX PRO Sync Solutions page (15 October 2026); GeForce comparison page, read 10 November 2026.

The rows need context. NVIDIA's datasheets list ECC for the memory of both cards, and its desktop line-up page of 8 September 2026 gives the Ada rows as "GDDR6 with ECC". The GeForce comparison page has no ECC row, and the word does not occur on it. The page says nothing either way about what GeForce memory can do.

Both cards run on the NVIDIA RTX Enterprise Production Branch driver, which NVIDIA's driver page describes as a rebrand of the Quadro Optimal Driver for Enterprise with the same ISV certification, long life-cycle support and regular security updates; the GeForce line has Game Ready and Studio drivers. The branches are the subject of our guide to the RTX Enterprise driver on Windows 10 and 11. What counts for a CAD seat is the list of the software maker. Dassault's SOLIDWORKS 2026 certification list, read 10 November 2026, has rows with desktop workstations for the RTX 5000 Ada and for the RTX 4500 Ada, each row being one computer model with one card and one driver, and the NVIDIA part of its card filter holds no GeForce name.

In video the number of encoders is the same, two, on all six cards of the first table, and AV1 encoding is listed on both sides and 4:2:2 encoding on neither. The documented differences are the session entry in NVIDIA's Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix of 16 October 2026, "Unrestricted" against 12, and the second decoder of the professional cards. Some professional cards do carry a session limit, as our article on NVENC session limits shows.

For virtual workstations NVIDIA's vGPU list of 2 October 2026 includes the RTX 5000 Ada from release 16.1; its display ports have to be turned off when vGPU software is used. The RTX 4500 Ada is not on the list, and neither is any GeForce card. NVIDIA's MIG guide of 4 November 2026 lists none of the cards on this page.

On the sync board NVIDIA's documents do not agree for the two Ada cards: 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 sync page lists no GeForce card. The Ada datasheets name Mosaic for Windows 10 and Linux, and we found no explicit exclusion of GeForce in NVIDIA's Mosaic documents.

The last point is the driver licence. Section 2.8 of NVIDIA's driver licence agreement, as read on 10 November 2026, says GeForce or Titan software "is not licensed for datacenter deployment"; the clause concerns the driver licence, not the hardware. Our article on GeForce in a server and the driver licence quotes the agreement.

RTX 5000 Ada vs RTX 4090 for AI

For local language models the memory decides first, because it sets which model file loads at all. Our sizing rule gives a card a budget for weights plus KV cache of 0.9 times the memory the driver reports, less 3 GiB. We scale the reported memory from the 95.6 GiB the driver shows on the 96 GB card, which is an assumption; the driver on the delivered card decides. The result is 25.7 GiB on a 32 GB card, 18.5 GiB on a 24 GB card and 11.3 GiB on a 16 GB card. The RTX 4500 Ada and the RTX 4090 therefore have the same budget, and the RTX 5000 Ada has 7.2 GiB more. Two files show the step, with sizes read from Hugging Face on 10 November 2026: Gemma 4 12B-it in BF16 (22.28 GiB) and Devstral Small 2 24B Instruct in FP8 (24.02 GiB) are inside 25.7 GiB and outside 18.5 GiB.

NVIDIA lists the Ada professional cards at compute capability 8.9, with FP8 and without FP4 acceleration in hardware. Its NIM for Visual Generative AI support matrix of 20 October 2026 gives the Ada-generation GPUs FP8 engines only and names the RTX 4090 and the RTX 4080 among the GPUs with pre-built engines for the FLUX.1 models; neither the RTX 5000 Ada nor the RTX 4500 Ada is on that list. Model files and the published AI measurements of the two professional cards are in RTX 5000 Ada and RTX 4500 Ada for AI.

RTX 5000 Ada vs RTX 5090 and RTX 4500 Ada vs RTX 5080

The GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 belong to the Blackwell generation, one generation after the Ada cards, and CUDA core counts compare only inside one generation; memory, power and format still compare. The RTX 5090 is listed with 32 GB of GDDR7, the same size as the RTX 5000 Ada, at 575 W against 250 W; its Founders Edition is 304 by 137 mm in two slots. The RTX 5080 has 16 GB at 360 W, against 24 GB at 210 W for the RTX 4500 Ada. NVIDIA's matrix lists 4:2:2 encoding for the GeForce RTX 50 Series, which the Ada cards lack.

The professional cards of the same generation as those two GeForce cards have their own pages: RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell vs RTX 5090 and RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell vs RTX 5080 and 5090.

What the published figures mean for a company workstation

A seat that needs 32 GB on one card of this generation has one candidate, the RTX 5000 Ada; the order is described on our page to buy the RTX 5000 Ada. Where 24 GB is enough and the chassis offers two slots, the RTX 4500 Ada holds that memory at 210 W, while the RTX 4090 has the same 24 GB at 450 W, in three slots as a Founders Edition. See buy the RTX 4500 Ada.

For virtual workstations the RTX 5000 Ada is the only card on this page that is on NVIDIA's vGPU list. For many encoding sessions at once, "Unrestricted" against 12 sessions in NVIDIA's matrix is the documented difference.

Where none of these points matters to the work and a tower has three free slots, the cables and the power, the RTX 4090 has the higher published core count with 24 GB.

We supply professional cards to companies and do not sell GeForce cards. For a decision on your own workstations, send us the application, the chassis and the number of seats; the answer is the professional card that fits, with a written quote.

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