Well it looks like NVIDIA is going to cancel its November 2022 launch of the GeForce RTX 4080 12GB graphics card. The company will relaunch the card under a different name. As of right now we do not know what that name will be or when the card will eventually be launched.
With the initial announcement of the RTX 40 series NVIDIA officially announced the RTX 4090, RTX 4080 16GB, and RTX 4080 12GB. NVIDIA has said that the RTX 4080 16GB is still on track for a November launch. The big problem a lot of us had with the initial announcement was that the two RTX 4080 models did not only differ in VRAM size, but were actually based on two different chips and had different CUDA core counts. The 16GB model is based on the larger “AD103” silicon, has 9,728 CUDA cores, and a 256-bit wide GDDR6X memory bus, while the 12GB model is based on the smaller “AD104” silicon, has just 7,680 CUDA cores (21% fewer CUDA cores) and only 192-bit wide GDDR6X memory bus. So you can see why many people were a bit upset that NVIDIA was calling this an RTX 4080 12GB when it is more or less a completely different card.
In general we are not a big fan of two cards with different VRAM sizes, it is just confusing, especially to first-time buyers. And then on top of that the specs of the cards are different. Criticism over the naming was all over social media so maybe that caused NVIDIA to cancel or “unlaunch” the card. It will be interesting to see what the card gets rebranded as.
As we mentioned the RTX 4080 16GB will be available November 16th.
Via NVIDIA
