The g5.16xlarge pairs 64 vCPU with 256 GiB of RAM, the 4.00 GiB-per-vCPU ratio that marks a GPU instance. In the name, "g" is graphics, "5" is the generation and "16xlarge" is the size within the g5 family. It runs on AMD EPYC 7R32 at 2.8 GHz, and AWS introduced it in November 2021. AWS has since shipped g6 and g7; g6.16xlarge is the direct replacement at this size, scoring 1,380,873 CoreMark/s against this instance's 1,246,915 — roughly 11% more throughput for the same vCPU count. Rackspace Spot runs one GPU class, gpu.vs2.xlargeplusplus — a single NVIDIA A30 with 24 vCPU and 64 GiB, in San Jose only. Against this instance's 1 × NVIDIA A10G that is a fair swap for inference and media work — the A30 carries more memory and more throughput per card.
Match qualityComparable GPU
g5.16xlarge pairs 1 Ampere GPU (24 GiB VRAM) with 64 vCPU. Spot's GPU node uses the NVIDIA A30 (Ampere, 24 GB VRAM) with 24 vCPU and 64 GiB of memory — newer hardware with more GPU memory, but 24 vCPU against 64. For inference, batch transcoding and single-card fine-tuning the card is the upgrade; anything CPU-bound running alongside it gets less to work with. The catch is location rather than hardware: US West, San Jose is the only Spot region that offers it, so latency to your users and egress to your data are the things to check.
No local diskg5.16xlarge comes with 1 × 1,900 GB NVMe SSD attached to the machine. Spot nodes use network storage only, so that disk doesn't come with it. If you were using it as fast scratch space, you'd move to a persistent volume or object storage, which are slower to read.
Pricing by region
1 hr
Region
AWS on-demand
AWS Spot
1-yr Reserved
3-yr Reserved
Rackspace Spot
You save
US West, San Jose
$0.191
When to use it
Good for
●CUDA-accelerated batch jobs
●Model inference and embedding generation
●Video transcoding and image processing
●Workloads that fit inside 256 GiB of RAM
●Jobs that want 1 × 1,900 GB of local NVMe scratch space
●Network-heavy services — AWS rates this size at 25 Gigabit
Avoid if
●Starting a new deployment. g6.16xlarge is the newer generation at this size.
●The working set needs more than 256 GiB of RAM
●More than 4.00 GiB of RAM per vCPU is needed — that ratio is fixed for the whole family
●The work is single-threaded. Most of these 64 vCPU would sit idle.
●Anything the CPU can do fast enough. GPU hours are the most expensive on the price list.
Rackspace Spot sells spare capacity at market prices. You pay what the market decides, not a list price.
Spot sells spare capacity at market prices. It is the cheapest compute on the internet.
Prices are set by supply and demand. You pay what the market decides.
Compute is delivered as fully managed Kubernetes. All infrastructure is taken care of.
Egress costs $0.01/GB after the free allowance. AWS charges $0.09/GB.
