L40S vs Instinct MI325X
NVIDIA L40S (Ada Lovelace, 48 GB) against AMD Instinct MI325X (CDNA 3, 256 GB): memory, compute, power and rental price, compared for LLM inference and training.
Pick two GPUs to compare
Side-by-Side Specifications
| Spec | L40S | Instinct MI325X |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | CDNA 3 |
| Memory | 48 GB GDDR6 | 256 GB HBM3e |
| Memory bandwidth | 864 GB/s | 6,000 GB/s |
| FP16 tensor compute | 733 TFLOPS | 2,615 TFLOPS |
| INT8 tensor compute | 1,466 TOPS | 5,230 TOPS |
| Interconnect | PCIe 4.0 · 64 GB/s | Infinity Fabric 3 · 896 GB/s |
| TDP | 350 W | 1000 W |
| Est. on-demand price | ~$3.50/h | ~$8.00/h |
| FP16 TFLOPS per $/h | 209 | 327 |
Highlighted values indicate the stronger spec. Hourly rates are indicative on-demand estimates.
Verdict
Raw performance: The Instinct MI325X leads on FP16 tensor compute (3.6x advantage), which translates directly into higher token throughput for inference and shorter training steps.
Memory: With 256 GB per card, the Instinct MI325X fits larger models on fewer GPUs — fewer cards means less inter-GPU communication and simpler deployments.
Value: At current on-demand rates, the Instinct MI325X delivers more compute per dollar (327 vs 209 FP16 TFLOPS per $/h). If your model fits in its VRAM budget, it is usually the more economical choice.
GPUs Needed for Popular LLMs
Cards required to serve each model at 8-bit quantization (with 20% overhead for activations and KV cache).
| Model | VRAM (8-bit) | L40S | Instinct MI325X |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 Sol | 2682 GB | 56x | 11x |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (671B) | 750 GB | 16x | 3x |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 335 GB | 7x | 2x |
| Claude 5 Sonnet (175B) | 196 GB | 5x | 1x |
| Nova Premier (80B) | 89 GB | 2x | 1x |
| Nova Core (34B) | 38 GB | 1x | 1x |
| Nova Lite (12B) | 13 GB | 1x | 1x |
| Phi 3.5 (3.8B) | 4 GB | 1x | 1x |
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for LLM inference: L40S or Instinct MI325X?
The Instinct MI325X delivers more raw FP16 compute (2,615 TFLOPS) and the Instinct MI325X offers the most memory per card (256 GB). For cost-efficiency, the Instinct MI325X currently gives more FP16 TFLOPS per dollar of on-demand rental (327 vs 209 TFLOPS per $/h).
How much more memory does the Instinct MI325X have?
The L40S has 48 GB of GDDR6 versus 256 GB of HBM3e for the Instinct MI325X — a ratio of 5.33x in favor of the Instinct MI325X. More VRAM per card means fewer GPUs to fit a given model.
Is the L40S or the Instinct MI325X cheaper to rent?
Estimated on-demand rates are ~$3.50/h for the L40S and ~$8.00/h for the Instinct MI325X. Raw hourly price is only part of the story: normalize by throughput (TFLOPS per $/h) and by how many cards you need for your model's VRAM.
How do the L40S and Instinct MI325X compare on power?
The L40S has a TDP of 350W versus 1000W for the Instinct MI325X. FP16 compute per watt: 2.1 vs 2.6 TFLOPS/W.
Deploy on a GPU cloud
Rent the L40S or Instinct MI325X by the hour instead of buying hardware.
