Friday, October 14th 2022
NVIDIA Cancels GeForce RTX 4080 12GB, To Relaunch it With a Different Name
NVIDIA has decided to cancel the November 2022 launch of the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB. The company will relaunch the card under a different name, though it didn't announce the replacement name just yet. The naming of the RTX 4080 12 GB was cause for much controversy. With the RTX 40-series "Ada," NVIDIA debuted three SKUs—the already launched RTX 4090 which is in stores right now; the RTX 4080 16 GB, and the RTX 4080 12 GB. Memory size notwithstanding, the RTX 4080 12 GB is a vastly different graphics card from the RTX 4080 16 GB.
The RTX 4080 12 GB and RTX 4080 16 GB didn't even share the same silicon. While the 16 GB model is based on the larger "AD103" silicon, has 9,728 CUDA cores, and a 256-bit wide GDDR6X memory bus; the RTX 4080 12 GB is based on the smaller "AD104" silicon, has just 7,680 CUDA cores (21% fewer CUDA cores); and a meager 192-bit wide GDDR6X memory bus. This had the potential to confuse buyers, especially given the $900 price. With criticism spanning not just social media but also bad press, NVIDIA decided to pull the plug on the RTX 4080 12 GB. The company will likely re-brand it as a successor to the RTX 3070 Ti, although then it will have a hard time justifying its $900 price-tag. The RTX 4080 16 GB, however, is on track for a November 16 availability date, with a baseline price of $1,200.
Source:
NVIDIA
The RTX 4080 12 GB and RTX 4080 16 GB didn't even share the same silicon. While the 16 GB model is based on the larger "AD103" silicon, has 9,728 CUDA cores, and a 256-bit wide GDDR6X memory bus; the RTX 4080 12 GB is based on the smaller "AD104" silicon, has just 7,680 CUDA cores (21% fewer CUDA cores); and a meager 192-bit wide GDDR6X memory bus. This had the potential to confuse buyers, especially given the $900 price. With criticism spanning not just social media but also bad press, NVIDIA decided to pull the plug on the RTX 4080 12 GB. The company will likely re-brand it as a successor to the RTX 3070 Ti, although then it will have a hard time justifying its $900 price-tag. The RTX 4080 16 GB, however, is on track for a November 16 availability date, with a baseline price of $1,200.

423 Comments on NVIDIA Cancels GeForce RTX 4080 12GB, To Relaunch it With a Different Name
Take away all the motorways now in your mind.
Your there.
Scalping happens when there are people who are willing to pay above MSRP whether it's a graphics card, concert tickets, or passes to the World Cup finals.
With the launch of the 4090, its quick sellout and subsequent eBay activity, clearly there are people who are willing to buy scalped 4090s above the porcine MSRPs.
During the pandemic and the Great GPU Shortage, we saw graphics cards (and CPUs) at all price levels scalped. Hell, even prices for used graphics cards went nuts. I bought a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 550 2GB card for my non-gaming daily driver PC in September 2020 for $65 (below its $79 launch price). At the peak of the shortage, this card was going for over $200.
Four. Year. Old. Graphics. Card.
People will buy a scalped potato if potatoes are rarities.
Scalpers exploit those who prioritize instant gratification over patiently waiting for a good value. FOMO is a driving influence for many. Look at the 3090. It's frequently available below MSRP now. The 6900 XT can be occasionally found at a ~50% discount from its MSRP which doesn't even go into the street prices during the Great GPU Shortage. It's not like 3090s stopped working the moment the 4090s started shipping.
Look at all of those super geniuses who pre-purchased Cyberpunk 2077 at full price which later repeatedly went on sale with discounts of 50% or more. FOR SOFTWARE. That wasn't even release quality. They paid top dollar for a sh!tty gameplay experience riddled with bugs and performance issues just to be first on the block to say they owned the game.
Heck, even graphics cards generally end up being better toward the end of the release cycle due to minor hardware improvements (respinning the boards, new chip steppings, etc.) and better software drivers.
Although price point is 2500... which is quite a bit too much even given the 19% VAT.
at this point ill get it when its like 8 bucks at some point, its not worth more.
When the renamed 4080 12GB card starts selling, it's up to each person to decide whether or not they will pay what is being charged for it whether its the Founders Edition at MSRP or some ridiculously priced scalped offering on fleeceBay.
But for sure, there are those who will pay big bucks for scalped product including some TPU participants. By doing business with scalpers they are encouraging scalping to continue.
There's a +45% performance increase between the 3080 and 4080 (16GB) models.
Amusingly, there's also a +45% increase between the 3070 and 4080 (12GB) models.
So the 4080 (12GB) really does look like a 4070 if one were to expect a similar generational uplift in performance.
PS
Eternal
Hint: there are plenty of other gaming benchmarks on the Internet. Even TPU graphics cards reviews cover multiple games so start here:
www.techpowerup.com/review/?category=Graphics+Cards&manufacturer=&pp=25&order=date
and once you've read all 833 posts, check back at the beginning because invariably there will be more. That should keep you busy for the weekend.
Enjoy!
:):p:D
Remember that the 4090 has a 384-bit memory bus and the 4080 has 256-bit.
As mentioned repeatedly in many, many threads, NVIDIA is binning silicon and earmarking better transistors for their higher priced products. Their top GPUs end up in data centers.
Very excellent GPUs end up in their top tier graphics cards. They are also binning VRMs, VRAM, and other silicon. Not all GDDR6X chips are the same in the same way that not all DDR4 chips perform equally. Not sure if you've noticed that.
All of these slight improvements add up.
There's also a very real possibility that the software driver used for these comparisons was optimized for the 4090. After all, that was the first Ada Lovelace card to be released so undoubtedly NVIDIA engineers prioritized that GPU.
This is yet another example why one can't look at a single game benchmark for at a single display resolution and make conclusive statements. Some games will benefit from more raster cores, some games can take advantage of RT and ML cores. Other games might favor fast and wide memory transfers, others just a lot of VRAM. Some games rely more on the CPU. And not each card works equally well with all graphics APIs. Some cards are better for DX11 games, others are better for DX12. And game developers sometimes end up writing code that favors a particular architecture, occasionally because game development was sponsored by a GPU manufacturer (AMD, NVIDIA, and now Intel).
So in the end, it's more than counting CUDA cores.
The point is that using a single game benchmark to describe _____ graphics card (regardless of the make and model number) at one resolution is not a meaningful way of summarizing its capabilities. Different cards exhibit different performance with different software under different operating conditions (not just display resolution).
Again, cherry picking through graphics benchmarks to pick one to argue a point just shows pure desperation and a complete disconnect from reality. That benchmark is only valid for that one game under those specific test conditions.
I don't know about you but I don't just play one game. Most people do not which is why these single-game benchmarks are nearly meaningless unless part of a larger assessment that includes other benchmarks, datapoints, and situations.
These single game benchmarks are actually better for assessing how well the game's code was written by seeing if there are gross anomalies between various cards. Sometimes gaming benchmarks/performance tuning guides are good for pinning down optimal settings for better performance.
I realize this is a very difficult concept for you to grasp and undoubtedly someone else can explain it better to you than me. I don't write graphics card reviews for a living.
Nvidia isn't undoing how bad this is.. Everytime after the mining ends they somehow put up the most ridiculous prices, Lets hope AMD puts a dent in their market share for good.