Nvidia cancels the controversial RTX 4080 12GB

Ever considering the fact that the launch of the enormously costly RTX 40-sequence, showcasing the RTX 4090 and both 16GB and 12GB flavors of the RTX 4080, some gamers have known as foul on Nvidia for the previous entry in that list. The 12GB variant of the most recent GeForce RTX 4080 card isn’t just a dip in memory, as the name implies, it also lowers quite a few other essential specs. Some avid gamers (including yours genuinely) stated that it would be additional appropriately identified as the RTX 4070, and priced as such. Nvidia appears to be to concur on the former position, if not always the latter: The GPU maker is canceling the 12GB edition of the card, for now.

“The RTX 4080 12GB is a great graphics card, but it’s not named proper,” admits Nvidia in a limited-but-sweet website put up. “Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is bewildering.” The business is referring obliquely to the simple fact that the 12GB variation of the card has a various chip structure with markedly much less CUDA cores and a far more restricted memory interface, additionally a pretty marginally boosted base clock. The rate for the 16GB model of the card is $1,199 and looks to be unchanged, although the 12GB version was formerly set at $899, both equally considerably a lot more than their RTX 30-sequence equivalents.

Nvidia

“So we’re pressing the ‘unlaunch’ button on the 4080 12GB,” states Nvidia. Exactly what it strategies to do with presumably hundreds of ready-to-ship graphics cards isn’t specified, though the company notes that the 16GB edition of the RTX 4080 is all set to go for its retail debut on November 16.

Whichever its options, Nvidia unquestionably is not heading to toss absent substantial batches of high-priced graphics playing cards. This is pure speculation on our element, but potentially Nvidia will hang on to them and make the 12GB 4080 the RTX 4070 it really should have been in the 1st location. Maybe it will even deign to reduced that selling price a bit—with Intel and AMD poised to just take gain of Nvidia’s hubristically superior prices, it couldn’t harm.