There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the recently introduced version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 12GB, and it seems that the company has finally succumbed to the notorious pressure and made a surprise decision.
Nvidia (opens in a new tab) announced that it will “output” 12GB RTX 4080. According to the official announcement, the reason for the “cancellation” is that the “RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it’s misnamed. Having two GPUs labeled 4080 is confusing.”
The 16GB version of the graphics card is still being prepped for a November 16 release, but the announcement claims it’s “amazing and well on its way to delighting gamers around the world.”
What happened to the RTX 4080 12GB?
Was a lot of controversy around the 12GB RTX 4080 and its specs, especially given the hefty $899 starting price tag. Compared to the 16GB version, we even found that the graphics cards used two different chips: the 16GB has the AD103 GPU chip and the 12GB has the AD104.
Not only that, but the 4080 has 2048 fewer CUDA cores, less cache, and less bus width. While we don’t have a card to test at the moment, this will likely result in a 20-25% performance difference between the 12GB and 16GB versions. This is a huge difference for models with the same brand of 4080. And there have been leaked benchmarks and also with Overclocking 3D which support the proposed performance difference.
This has led many to believe that the 12GB 4080 is an overpriced 4070 in disguise. Judging both by the lackluster performance and the fact that Nvidia has delayed the launch with a rebrand on the horizon, there’s a lot of merit to this theory. Let’s hope that a mistake of this magnitude will not be repeated.
https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidia-caught-with-its-pants-down-will-unlaunch-the-12gb-rtx-4080/