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I Ranked 20 GPUs for Local AI by Value: The Winner Isn’t Who You’d Expect
I graded 20 graphics cards by price per gigabyte and price per speed. Here’s who wins, who loses, and what to buy.
Some graphics cards for local AI cost more than a used car. Others cost less than a phone. So which one gets you the most AI for your money?
I went through a set of price and speed data for the cards people ask about most. That includes the RTX 3090 and 5090 that everyone argues about, plus two old server cards most people scroll past: the Tesla P40 and the AMD Instinct MI50.
I ranked them from S (best) to F (worst). The surprise is that the best value is a server card older than most laptops, and some of the newest NVIDIA cards sit at the very bottom.
What sinks most of the bad cards isn’t speed. It’s too little memory for the money. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to grade any card yourself.
How I grade a GPU for AI
I use two numbers. Both are divided by the price you’d pay today.
1. Dollars per gigabyte of memory.
Memory decides what you can run at all. Think of it as the size of your desk. The model has to fit on the desk, with room left over for the…
