Nvidia Scraps Plans For RTX 4080 12GB Card Amidst Community Pushback

Last Updated on October 15, 2022 by Anu Joy

The 12GB RTX 4080 graphics card that Nvidia has been planning to release has been put on hold. After first announcing the 12GB RTX 4080 alongside a far more powerful 16GB variant last month, Nvidia now acknowledges that the nomenclature was incorrect. The company said in a blog post that having two GPUs with the 4080 name is confusing and a bad idea. The 16GB variant will go on sale on November 16, 2022 while Nvidia shuts down the 12GB model’s introduction.

Nvidia claims that the RTX 4080 is 2-4 times faster than the RTX 3080 Ti. The lower end supports 12GB memory, while the upper end has 16GB GDDR6X memory. The 9728 CUDA cores on the 16GB model have a boost clock of 2.51GHz and a 256-bit interface. In comparison, the 12GB version includes a 192-bit interface, 7680 CUDA cores, and a boost frequency of 2.61GHz.

Nvidia’s choice to classify the 12GB model as an RTX 4080 had drawn criticism, especially given how it differed from the 16GB variant. The 12GB RTX 4080 was to cost $899 (₹99,500), while the 16GB version costs $1,199 (₹1,33,000). It will be interesting to see how Nvidia puts a new GPU in the under-$1000 band, since the company hasn’t revealed when it plans to relaunch the 12GB RTX 4080 under a different name.