Nvidia will be “unlaunching” the 12 GB product of its RTX 4080 graphics card, the organization introduced Friday. The news arrives just months following the company disclosed the products as part of a new line of GPUs. In a temporary web site submit, Nvidia did not present a lot context for the determination further than saying that the card was “not named ideal.”
Nvidia announced two — nicely, technically a few — new GPUs in late September, the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080. The latter would be obtainable in two versions, Nvidia explained: a model with 16 GB of video memory and one with 12 GB.
Dependent on that, a person may well consider that the RAM would be the only distinction involving the two RTX 4080 variants. Nevertheless, that was not the case — the GPUs had been to characteristic considerably distinct specifications. The 16 GB product has 9,728 CUDA cores, an increase of additional than 26% about the 12 GB card’s 7,680 cores. And while both of those styles had GDDR6X memory, the RAM in the 12 GB variant was slower, with lessen memory bandwidth. As we put it in our compose-up of Nvidia’s 40-sequence GPU announcement, it might be far better to contemplate the 12 GB model “as an entry-degree RTX 4080 which is closer to a RTX 4070.5” rather than a correct substantial-powered RTX 4080.
“Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing,” Nvidia acknowledged Friday.
The two RTX 4080 types had been priced in accordance to their specs — the 16 GB model would begin at $1,199, whilst the 12 GB design would commence at $899. Nvidia’s determination to pull the less costly card leaves only two incredibly expensive GPUs in the company’s 40-collection line: The RTX 4090, which introduced earlier this 7 days, starts at an eye-watering $1,599. It is a lot to swallow when the steep prices of these new graphics playing cards have currently led Personal computer players to specific concern more than getting capable to afford to pay for them.
The potential of the 12 GB RTX 4080 continues to be unclear all that Nvidia mentioned was that the firm would be “unlaunching” it. (While we’re right here, it is well worth noting that neither model of the RTX 4080 has basically released nevertheless — equally had been scheduled to debut in November.)
In an email to Polygon a representative mentioned that generation on the card had not began, but did not not make clear what “unlaunching” intended.
Considering the fact that production hadn’t started out still, “unlaunching” could imply that Nvidia will completely shelve the 12 GB card and no renamed version will appear to people.
Update: We current this report to incorporate further reviews from a representative of Nvidia.