Image: Nvidia
Nvidia’s previously-revealed cheaper RTX 4080 card is being removed.
In an unprecedented and deeply funny turn of events, Nvidia is ‘unlaunching’ its cheaper 12GB version of the RTX 4080 graphics card. The company announced that the card has been removed from the upcoming RTX 4000-series lineup of cards because “it’s not named right.”
The original lineup of Nvidia's upcoming RTX 4000-series graphics cards included three GPUs: the RTX 4090, 12GB RTX 4080 and 16GB RTX 4080. However, you’d be wrong to think that 4GB of video memory is all that separates both versions of the RTX 4080. The 16GB version of the card has 9,728 CUDA cores while the 12GB card has 7,680, and both cards are priced according to their differing specifications. While the original lineup didn’t include an RTX 4070, the cheaper 12GB RTX 4080 was essentially that - but rebranded to justify its higher price point.
This was a pretty transparently greedy move on Nvidia’s part, which led to a whole lot of negativity and head-scratching following the lineup’s announcement. Nvidia however, is keeping its reasoning for ‘unlaunching’ the cheaper 4080 vague, saying, “Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing” so it’s “pressing the ‘unlaunch’ button on the 4080 12GB. The RTX 4080 16GB is amazing and on track to delight gamers everywhere on November 16th.”
The 12GB version of the 4080 was going to start at $899, while the 16GB version started at $1,199. The RTX 4090 on the other hand, starts at a whopping $1,599 - which leaves gamers in a hard spot. Anyone who wanted in on the RTX 4000-series at least had a cheaper option to turn to in the 12GB 4080, despite its artificially hiked-up price. Now that the 12GB version is gone, they only have the option of spending either $1,199 or $1,599. No in between.
What was once unaffordable has become even more unaffordable, though it remains to be seen if we’ll see the 12GB RTX 4080 eventually return under a different name - and hopefully, lower price.
