NVIDIA
Operating mode
Use this to bias workload recommendations toward responsiveness, background autonomy, lighter serving, or multi-GPU scale-out.
Current mode
Balanced
Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.
The NVIDIA A40 is a professional workstation and server GPU based on Ampere, offering 48 GB of GDDR6 in a dual-slot PCIe form factor. Originally positioned for visualization and rendering, its large VRAM made it popular for LLM inference workloads requiring more than 24 GB — it can run 30B models at Q4 and 13B models near FP16. While its bandwidth (696 GB/s GDDR6) trails HBM-based alternatives, the A40 offers an accessible on-prem option for teams that need substantial VRAM without the infrastructure demands of SXM platforms.
Beyond LLMs
What AI tasks this GPU can handle — from text generation to image and video creation.
| Capability | Status | Representative Model |
|---|---|---|
| LLM Chat (7B) | Runs natively | Llama 3.1 8B Q4 |
| LLM Coding (30B) | Runs natively | Qwen 3 30B Q4 |
| LLM Large (70B) | Needs offload | Llama 3.1 70B Q4 |
| Image Gen (SDXL) | Runs natively | SDXL 1.0 FP16 |
| Image Gen (Flux) | Runs natively | Flux.1 Dev FP16 |
| Image Gen (SD 3.5) | Runs natively | SD 3.5 Large FP16 |
| Video Short (25f) | Runs natively | LTX Video 2B |
| Video Long (100f) | Won't fit | Wan Video 14B |
Architecture
Ampere is NVIDIA's second-generation RTX architecture, built on Samsung's 8nm process. It introduced 3rd-generation Tensor Cores with support for sparsity-accelerated INT8 operations and improved FP16 throughput over Turing.
AI Relevance
Sparsity-aware Tensor Cores can effectively double throughput for structured sparse workloads. However, the lack of FP8 support means quantized inference is less efficient than Ada Lovelace or Blackwell.
Conselho de compra
Excelente escolha para IA local
Roda 29 de 50 modelos principais bem — um ótimo coringa para inferência local.
48.0 GB
VRAM
$5,500
Preço sugerido
$115/GB
Custo por GB de VRAM
Melhores modelos para esta GPU
What will limit you first
This setup is broadly balanced for this model.
No major red flags
This recommendation has enough memory headroom and acceptable estimated speed for the selected workload.
Best upgrade itinerary
Unlocks 5 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.
Quer mais margem? AMD Instinct MI210 64GB (64.0 GB VRAM) é o próximo passo.
Chat
SThis model is a direct match for chat. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
Coding
SThis model is a direct match for coding. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, lm-studio.
Agentic Coding
SThis model is still usable for agentic-coding, but it is not the most specialized pick. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, lm-studio.
Reasoning
SThis model is a direct match for reasoning. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
RAG
SThis model is a direct match for rag. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, ollama, lm-studio.
Qwen 3.6 35B A3BQwen3-Coder 30B A3B InstructQwen 3.5 35B A3BQwen3-VL 30B A3B InstructQwen 3 30B A3BQwen 3.5 27BQwen 3 32BNemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B
Magistral Small 2507Qwen 3.6 27BDevstral Small 2 24B InstructNemotron 3 Nano 30B
GPT-OSS 20BQwen 3.5 9B
Gemma 4 31BQwen 3 14BDevstral Small 1.1
Phi-4-reasoning-plus 14BGemma 4 26B A4BQwen 3 8B
EXAONE 4.0 32BQwen 3.5 4BMinistral 3 14BNemotron Nano 8BPhi-4 Mini Reasoning 4BQwen3-Coder-NextQwen 2.5 VL 72B
Jina Embeddings v3
BGE M3Qwen 3.5 397B A17BDevstral 2 123B Instruct
Kimi K2.5Kimi K2.6
DeepSeek V4 ProQwen 3.5 122B A10BDeepSeek V4 FlashMistral Small 4 119B
Command A 111BGPT-OSS 120B
GLM-5.1Pixtral Large 124BGLM-5DeepSeek V3.2Qwen 3 235B A22BQwen3-Coder 480B A35B InstructLeanstral 119B A6BDeepSeek Coder V2 236BDeepSeek R1 671BDeepSeek V3.1 671BQuase ao alcance
Modelos de alta qualidade que precisam de um pouco mais de memória
Image & Video Generation
50 of 52 models can generate images or video on your NVIDIA A40 48GB
| Model | Max Resolution | Gen Time | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD TurboImage | 512×512 | 500ms | S |
| Stable Diffusion 1.5Image | 512×768 | ~1.1s | S |
| Realistic Vision v5.1Image | 512×768 | ~1.1s | S |
| DreamShaper 8Image | 512×768 | ~1.1s | S |
| LCM DreamShaper v7Image | 512×768 | 300ms | S |
| PixArt-SigmaImage | 1024×1024 | ~4.3s | S |
| FramePack I2VVideo | 640×480 | ~13.5s/frame | S |
| SDXL TurboImage | 512×512 | 500ms | S |
| SDXL LightningImage | 1024×1024 | ~1.6s | S |
| Stable Diffusion XL 1.0Image | 1024×1024 | ~4.3s | S |
| Playground v2.5Image | 1024×1024 | ~6.4s | S |
| RealVisXL v5.0Image | 1024×1024 | ~4.8s | S |
| DreamShaper XLImage | 1024×1024 | ~4.8s | S |
| Juggernaut XL v9Image | 1024×1024 | ~4.8s | S |
| Animagine XL 3.1Image | 1024×1024 | ~4.8s | S |
| Pony Diffusion V6 XLImage | 1024×1024 | ~4.8s | S |
| Animagine XL 4.0Image | 1024×1024 | ~4.8s | S |
| Illustrious XLImage | 1024×1024 | ~4.8s | S |
| Wan Video 2.1 1.3BVideo | 480×832 | ~3.1s/frame | S |
| Stable Diffusion 3.5 MediumImage | 1024×1024 | ~7.5s | S |
| Flux.2 Klein 4BImage | 1024×1024 | ~1.3s | S |
| LTX Video 2BVideo | 1280×720 | ~3.7s/frame | S |
| KolorsImage | 1024×1024 | ~8.5s | S |
| Stable CascadeImage | 1024×1024 | ~10.7s | S |
| AuraFlow v0.3Image | 1536×1536 | ~19.2s | S |
| Stable Diffusion 3.5 LargeImage | 1024×1024 | ~23.4s | S |
| Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large TurboImage | 1024×1024 | ~4.3s | S |
| CogVideoX 2BVideo | 720×480 | ~3.7s/frame | S |
| HunyuanVideoVideo | 256×256 | ~13.5s/frame | S |
| ChromaImage | 1024×1024 | ~4.3s | S |
| Z-Image TurboImage | 1536×1536 | ~4.4s | S |
| Flux.1 DevImage | 1024×1024 | ~19.2s | S |
| Flux.1 SchnellImage | 1024×1024 | ~3.7s | S |
| LTX Video 13BVideo | 768×512 | ~7.8s/frame | S |
| Flux.1 Kontext DevImage | 1024×1024 | ~21.3s | S |
| AnimateDiff v1.5.3Video | 512×768 | ~1.9s/frame | S |
| Cosmos Diffusion 7BVideo | 1024×576 | ~6.1s/frame | S |
| CogVideoX 5BVideo | 720×480 | ~5.3s/frame | S |
| Wan2.2 TI2V 5BVideo | 832×480 | ~5.3s/frame | S |
| Flux.2 Klein 9BImage | 1024×1024 | ~2.1s | S |
| Flux.1 Fill DevImage | 1024×1024 | ~18.1s | S |
| Mochi 1 PreviewVideo | 848×480 | ~7s/frame | S |
| HunyuanVideo 1.5Video | 720×1280 | ~6.5s/frame | A |
| Helios 14BVideo | 832×480 | ~8.1s/frame | B |
| SkyReels V2 14BVideo | 256×256 | ~8.1s/frame | B |
| Wan Video 2.1 14BVideo | 256×256 | ~13.8s/frame | D |
| Wan Video 2.2 14BVideo | 256×256 | ~13.8s/frame | D |
| Qwen ImageImage | 256×256 | ~11.8s | D |
| Qwen Image EditImage | 256×256 | ~11.8s | D |
| Flux.2 DevImage | 256×256 | ~3m 22s | D |
| MAGI-1Video | 256×256 | ~10s/frame | F |
| HunyuanImage 3.0Image | 256×256 | ~12.6s | F |
Image models estimated at 1024×1024 (28 steps, FP16). Video models estimated at 768×512 (25 frames, 30 steps, FP16). Actual performance varies with runtime and system load.
Multi-GPU scaling
Scale out with multiple GPUs for larger models. PCIe interconnect with 25% scaling overhead.
| Config | Effective memory | Models that fit | Est. bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1× NVIDIA | 48 GB | 338/374 | 696 GB/s |
| 2× NVIDIA | 96 GB | 351/374 | 1,044 GB/s |
Model counts use default quantization at coding workload settings. Multi-GPU scaling factor: 0.75× per additional GPU.
Upgrade paths
See what you unlock with more powerful hardware
Opções de upgrade
2× NVIDIA A40 48GBMulti-GPUUnlocks 13 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.
Lifts average decode speed across fitting models by about 13%.
Scale-out only pays off if the host platform has enough PCIe lanes, slot spacing, power, and cooling.
The bigger the setup gets, the more the runtime matters. Multi-GPU and multi-user serving are where vLLM, SGLang, TGI, TensorRT-LLM, or tuned llama.cpp start to earn their complexity.
~$5,500 MSRP
Unlocks 5 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.
Lifts average decode speed across fitting models by about 29%.
~$10,000 MSRP
NVIDIA A100 80GBUpgrade NVIDIAUnlocks 12 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.
Lifts average decode speed across fitting models by about 51%.
~$15,000 MSRP
Unlocks 13 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.
~$2,499 MSRP
Unlocks 26 additional models that do not fit on the current setup.
Lifts average decode speed across fitting models by about 142%.
~$8,000 MSRP
NVIDIA A40 48GB (48 GB VRAM) can run these top models: Qwen 3.6 35B A3B (score: 97/100), Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B Instruct (score: 96/100), Qwen 3.5 35B A3B (score: 96/100). See the full compatibility list above.
NVIDIA A40 48GB has 48 GB of VRAM available for AI model inference. This determines which models and quantization levels you can run locally.
Yes, NVIDIA A40 48GB is excellent for running LLMs locally with top compatibility scores above 80/100.
For coding on NVIDIA A40 48GB, we recommend Qwen 3.6 27B. It achieves 27.1 tokens per second with 262K context window. This model is a direct match for coding. It belongs to a current frontier family for local AI. It fits natively with comfortable headroom. Known channels: huggingface, lm-studio.
There are 5 upgrade path(s) from NVIDIA A40 48GB: NVIDIA A40 48GB, AMD Instinct MI210 64GB. Upgrading would unlock larger models and faster inference speeds.
Yes, NVIDIA A40 48GB with 48 GB of usable memory can run Flux.1 Dev at FP16 natively. Flux is a 12B parameter diffusion transformer that produces high-quality images. You can also run the Schnell variant for faster generation.
NVIDIA A40 48GB (48 GB VRAM) can handle various AI generation tasks beyond LLMs. For image generation, SDXL and Stable Diffusion 3.5 run well. Flux.1 Dev also runs natively for state-of-the-art image quality. For video, LTX Video 2.3 can generate short clips. Check the AI Capability Matrix above for detailed compatibility.
NVIDIA A40 48GB is excellent for AI image generation. With 48 GB of usable memory, it runs all major diffusion models including Flux.1, SDXL, and Stable Diffusion 3.5 at full precision. You can generate high-resolution images quickly and even handle video generation models.
Yes, NVIDIA A40 48GB with 48 GB of usable memory can run Qwen 3.5 27B at Q8 (near-lossless, ~28.9 GB) or even FP16 (~55.4 GB) depending on your context needs. This setup provides an excellent experience with this model. Use Ollama or vLLM for best results.
With 48 GB VRAM on NVIDIA A40 48GB, use Q8_0 for most models — it is near-lossless and you have the memory for it. For 70B+ models, Q6_K offers excellent quality. Reserve Q4_K_M for 100B+ models or when you need maximum context length.
NVIDIA A40 48GB has enough memory for many local LLMs, but bandwidth still matters a lot for real speed. Once a model fits, a faster-memory GPU can feel significantly better than a slower setup with similar capacity.
NVIDIA A40 48GB supports up to 2× GPU scaling via PCIe. With 2× GPUs, you get 96 GB effective memory with a 0.75× scaling factor per GPU. This enables running models like Qwen 3.5 397B A17B and Devstral 2 123B Instruct that don't fit on a single card.
NVIDIA A40 48GB uses PCIe for multi-GPU communication, which has approximately 25% scaling overhead. For best multi-GPU performance, consider NVLink-equipped variants.
Usually yes. If you want to run 2-4× NVIDIA A40 48GB for local AI, the bottleneck often becomes the platform, not the card. Workstation and server boards give you more CPU PCIe lanes, better x16 slot wiring, more spacing between cards, stronger power delivery, and usually more RAM capacity. Consumer x8/x8 layouts can work, but they are a common weak point in multi-GPU builds.
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