announcement
NVIDIA announced October 14 local time that it will stop selling the new “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB” graphics card. As for the reason, it was reported that the name was not appropriate and the reason appears to be the discrepancy between the product name and the actual specification.
The “GeForce RTX 4080” is a new GPU announced by NVIDIA on September 21st. It was announced alongside the flagship “GeForce RTX 4090” GPU, which went on sale October 12. The “GeForce RTX 4080” is available in 12GB and 16GB models and was supposed to be released in November (Related article). This 12GB memory model was announced to be discontinued this time around.
NVIDIA to notify the cancellationOfficial blog postHence, he claimed that the name “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB” was “not accurate”. The existence of two types of GPUs with the 4080 name is said to be confusing and led to the decision to cancel the launch. Instead, it seems that the 16GB model will be released on November 16.
In fact, the product name “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB / 16GB” would have been confusing. Looking at the product name alone, the difference between the 12GB and 16GB models of the RTX 4080 appears to be just the difference in memory size. However, in reality, the two models had a big difference in specifications. For example, the number of CUDA Core, which is one of the indicators of computing power, is 9728 for the 16GB model and 7680 for the 12GB model. Also, as far as memory specs are concerned, the 16GB model has a bus width of 256 bits, while the 12GB model has a bus width of 192 bits. In other words, the difference in specs between the two models was greater than consumers imagined in the 12GB / 16GB split.
The “confusion” mentioned by NVIDIA probably also refers to the divergence between the product name and the specifications. With such a difference in specs, it would be better to give the 12GB model a name like “RTX 4070” and set it as the lower model to avoid confusion. This announcement does not show how the old “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB” will be handled. In case of “re-debut”, with what name will it return?
