The RTX 4080 12GB will no longer be available at launch, as Nvidia unexpectedly announced. The variant will also be permanently discontinued. This comes after Nvidia’s terrible naming strategy for the RTX 4080 12GB, which had much lower core counts and memory specifications than the 4080 16GB variant, received significant backlash from the community.
The choice to pull a product from the launch schedule is even less typical than the company’s decision to acknowledge branding errors. Unquestionably misleading in its naming, the RTX 4080 12GB and 16GB cards have fundamentally different core specs despite matching the RTX 4080 designation.
Using the AD103 GPU, the RTX 4080 16GB was expected to have 9728 CUDA cores, a 256-bit wide bus, 22.6Gbps GDDR6X memory, and 717 GB/s of bandwidth. The RTX 4080 12GB, on the other hand, would make use of the AD104 GPU, which had just 7680 CUDA cores. It would also connect 21Gbps GDDR6X with a 192-bit wide bus, producing 504 GB/s of bandwidth.
According to Nvidia’s own testing, the enormous difference in specs between the 4080 12GB and 16GB variants resulted in a staggering 30% performance gap, which, when compared to earlier GeForce products, corresponds to an entirely separate performance tier.
Given those performance metrics, it’s a relief that Nvidia decided against releasing the RTX 4080 12GB before it was ready.
It appears that the RTX 4080 16GB will now debut as just the RTX 4080, most likely with the same specifications but omitting the memory size from the moniker. We don’t yet know if the name change will result in a price reduction, but given that the 4090 was sold out upon release, we shouldn’t hold out much hope. The RTX 3080 Ti was initially priced at $1,199, but the 3080 10GB was only $699. If Nvidia retains the 4080 at the prior $1,199 price point, this would be a significant generational pricing increase.
Only its removal from the product stack, not a replacement for the RTX 4080 12GB, has been revealed by Nvidia. Considering that RTX 4080 12GB partner models were probably already in production, Nvidia must be working on a replacement. We anticipate it to carry the RTX 4070 name, but if Nvidia chooses to go that route, it might also become the RTX 4070 Ti. We anticipate Nvidia will lower the price with a downgrade to RTX 4070 status as $599 for an RTX 4070 seems fair to us.
More than just press and enthusiast criticism over the naming strategy is likely going on behind the scenes. Despite having a starting price of $1,599, RTX 4090 was sold out. Perhaps Nvidia believes it can boost prices on other products. It’s tough to imagine a situation in which the AD103 and AD104 need to sell for $1,200 and $900, respectively, in order to increase Nvidia earnings when taking into account the probable cost of the hardware powering the multiple GPUs.
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