Nvidia Officially Unlaunched RTX 4080 12GB GPU |Asiana Times

Nvidia has postponed the launch of the RTX 4080 12GB GPU model, but it will still launch the 16GB variant on November 16.

Nvidia has unlaunched the November release of the RTX 4080 12 GB graphics card.

Nvidia released a brief statement on this earlier today in which they stated “the RTX 4080 12GB is an amazing graphics card, but it is not named right. Having two GPUs with the 4080 specifications is confusing.”

“So we have pressed the unlaunch button on the 4080 12. The RTX 4080 16 GB is amazing and on track to delight gamers everywhere on November 16th.”

“If the lines around the block and enthusiasm for the 4090 are any indication, the 4080 will be great.”

The decision to unlaunch this GPU is unexpected, and it has a number of intriguing effects worthy of discussion. This is one of the most unusual moves we’ve seen from the company.

Reasons why Nvidia decided to unlaunch

The most major one is that they faced a lot of backlash and criticism for releasing the RTX 4080 16GB and 4080 12 GB with such a similar name. A few weeks ago, when they announced their Ada Lovelace showcase, the reaction was swift and harsh for the entire online enthusiast community.

The comments mostly focused on two problems–

First off, it can be confusing when two products have the same name or even a name that sounds similar, yet they perform differently.

Second, it is obvious that this 4080 12GB card should have been available in a normal 70 tiers with comparable pricing when compared to earlier releases. Even if the card performed well and offered customers a decent value, this would almost surely garner unfavorable reviews. Nvidia has never been a huge admirer of criticism, while we’re on the subject.

What’s the difference between the 2 GPU RTX 4080 12GB and 16GB

The RTX 4080 16GB and RTX 4080 12GB cards have different features that go beyond the amount of GDDR6X memory they could hold when they were first expected to be released. The 4080 12GB configuration claimed 7680 CUDA Cores compared to 9728 CUDA Cores for the 4080 16GB, a 21% decrease, with clock speeds that were essentially the same on both models. The 12GB variant also featured fewer CUDA Cores and was really designed to use the complete GPU drive.

Additionally, the 16GB card’s 192-bit interface, rather than its 256-bit version, decreased memory bandwidth. Due to this, the 4080 12GB card would have been noticeably slower than the 16GB version. Offering two GPUs with such wide variations in performance while calling them almost identical is odd and misleading.

The 4080 12GB was already receiving criticism, but enthusiasts would have observed that. According to Nvidia’s calculations, it doesn’t perform all that much better than the RTX 3080 without taking into account DLSS technology.

Based on the typical Nvidia Benchmark results, we anticipated the RTX 4080 12GB go slot to be near or just below the RTX 3090. With the RTX 4080 16GB looking to be 20% faster than the 3090, who knows where this would have ended up in terms of crucial metrics like cost per frame?

Why Nvidia named it RTX 4080 12GB

It’s possible that Nvidia is attempting to resolve a number of issues and has chosen the apparently best solution. Instead of facing the consequences of boosting the price of the 70 tier by 80% in a single production, they chose to price this card at 900 US dollars, which is significantly higher than the previous 70 tier models, including the RTX 3070 and 2070, both of which cost 500 US dollars.

RTX 4080 12GB GPU — Credit: notebookcheck

They chose to put this into the 4080 Ti, which led to a different set of challenges. Nvidia has since unlaunched that card and acknowledged it was unclear, so it doesn’t appear to have worked out in their favor.

As a result, Nvidia will have the chance to conduct a more thorough analysis of the market before relaunching this product under a different name and perhaps at a higher price. If Nvidia thought that the RTX 4080 12GB would be poor against other options, they currently have the best chance to create a product that is suitable for the future and present GPU markets.