There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the recently revealed version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 12GB, and it seems the company has finally bowed under the proverbial pressure and made an unexpected decision.
Nvidia (opens in a new tab) announced that it would “release” 12 GB RTX 4080. According to the official post, the reason for this “release” is that “The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but the name was not properly named. Having two GPUs labeled 4080 is confusing. “
The 16GB version of the graphics card is still geared up for release on November 16, but announced to be “amazing and well on its way to wow gamers around the world.”
What happened to the RTX 4080 12 GB?
There was a lot of controversy surrounding the 12GB RTX 4080 and its specs, especially considering the high starting price of $ 899. Compared to the 16 GB version, we found that graphics cards use two different chips: 16 GB uses the AD103 GPU and 12 GB uses the AD104 chip.
Moreover, the 4080 has 2,048 fewer CUDA cores, less cache and less bus width. While we don’t currently have a card to test, this would most likely make a 20-25% performance difference between the 12GB and 16GB versions. This is a huge difference for models with the same 4080 branding. As well as leaked benchmarks from Overclock 3D that support this proposed performance difference.
This has led many to believe that 12GB 4080 is 4070 in disguise, with an inflated price tag. Judging by both the poor performance and the fact that Nvidia has delayed its release with rebranding on the horizon, there’s a lot of credit to this theory. Hopefully a mistake of this magnitude will never happen again.