Nvidia postponed the launch of RTX 4080 12GB due to backlash from the market

After a long time with countless rumors, NVIDIA has finally officially introduced new high-end GPU models on the GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2022) event stage with the names RTX 4090 and RTX 4080. Both card models These flagship graphics are all developed on the completely new Ada Lovelace architecture that the company has long cherished, accompanied by a series of significant performance improvements. The new lineup includes the RTX 4090 flagship model priced at $1,599, along with two RTX 4080 SKUs: the RTX 4080 16GB priced at $1,199 and the 4080 12GB variant listed at $899.

However, the difference is not just in naming and VRAM memory capacity. These two versions of RTX 4080 actually possess quite different specifications. While the 12GB variant has 7680 CUDA cores, with a base clock of 2.31GHz and the ability to boost up to 2.61GHz, the 16GB version is equipped with up to 9728 CUDA cores, a base clock of 2.21GHz and a boost clock of up to 2.51GHz. Nvidia has significantly reduced the number of CUDA cores of the 12GB version compared to the 16GB model. This is essentially a reduction of up to 20% in single core count. Meanwhile, bandwidth is even more affected with a reduction of over 30%.

Although Nvidia has applied this naming policy to many of its graphics card models in the past, such as the GTX 1050 3GB model or the GTX 1060 3GB variant. However, the difference in core count and overall performance between two such VRAM variants has never been as great as that of the RTX 4080 16GB and 12GB. This is the reason why Nvidia has suffered countless heavy criticisms from both the media and the user community. Most opinions believe that such naming is extremely misleading, because these are almost two separate products.

Nvidia seems to have realized the problem and decided to postpone the official launch of the RTX 4080 12GB model, which was scheduled for November 16.

RTX 4080 12GB is a great graphics card model, but it's quite unfortunate that our naming has caused unnecessary trouble. Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing.

Therefore, we will postpone plans for the 4080 12GB. The RTX 4080 16GB will still be a great choice, and promises to please gamers everywhere when it goes on sale on November 16.

Currently, it is unclear what Nvidia will call the 4080 12GB. Perhaps something less misleading, such as the RTX 4080 Lite version, or the RTX 4070 Ti would be a good idea, too.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 16 October 2023