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Nvidia Unlaunches 12GB RTX 4080

A short post from Nvidia explained how they realise that making a 12GB and 16GB version of the 4080 was a mistake, and has decided to cancel the 12GB version.

GeForce RTX 4080 - Founders Edition

After controversy surrounding the 12GB version of the RTX 4080 since it was announced, Nvidia has chosen to listen to the community and will be ‘unlaunching’ the card. In their post regarding the decision, they stated the reason was that “the RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it’s not named right. Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing.”

The backlash came from the community complaining that the 12GB differed so greatly from the 16GB version and even though both were named 4080s, the spec difference was too great to justify sharing the name.

RTX 4080 12Gb

RTX 4080 16GB
AD104 GPU AD103 GPU
7680 CUDA cores 9728 CUDA cores
21Gbps GDDR6X 22.6Gbps GDDR6X
192-bit wide bus 256-bit wide bus
504 GB/s bandwidth 717 GB/s bandwidth

According to testing on the cards by Nvidia themselves, this ammounted to a 30% performance difference between the two cards, which works out to be the difference between different tiers of cards, not what would be expected when comparing two cards in the same tier.

Going forward, Nvidia will be releasing the 3080 16GB under the name RTX 4080, and it has yet to be revealed what they plan to do with the 4080 12GB. It is expected that it will become either the 4070 or 4070 Ti, and hopefully with a price decrease. With the 4090 selling out at launch, Nvidia might decide that they are confident enough to keep the prices high if fans are still buying stock.

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