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NVIDIA announced on October 14th local time that it will stop selling the new graphic board “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB”. As for the reason, it is said that the name was not appropriate, and the reason seems to be the discrepancy between the product name and the actual specifications.
The “GeForce RTX 4080” is a new GPU announced by NVIDIA on September 21st. It was announced along with the top GPU “GeForce RTX 4090”, which is on sale from October 12th. The “GeForce RTX 4080” is available in 12GB and 16GB models, and was scheduled to be released in November (Related article). This memory 12GB model was announced to be discontinued this time.
NVIDIA to inform the cancellationOfficial blog postThen, he mentioned that the name “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB” was “not accurate”. It is said that the existence of two types of GPUs under the name 4080 is confusing and has led to the decision to unlaunch. On the other hand, it seems that the 16GB model will be released from November 16th.
In fact, the product name “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB/16GB” would have been confusing. Looking only at the product name, the difference between the 12GB and 16GB models of the RTX 4080 seems to be only the difference in memory size. However, in reality, the two models had quite a big difference in specs. For example, the number of CUDA Cores, which is one of the indicators of computing power, is 9728 for the 16GB model and 7680 for the 12GB model. Also, regarding the specifications of the memory itself, the 16GB model has a bus width of 256bit, while the 12GB model has a 192bit bus width. In other words, the difference in specs between the two models was greater than consumers imagined from the 12GB/16GB division.
The “confusing” mentioned by NVIDIA also probably refers to the divergence between the product name and the specs. With such a spec difference, it would be better to give the 12GB model a name such as “RTX 4070” and set it as a lower model to prevent confusion. In this announcement, it is not reported how the old “GeForce RTX 4080 12GB” will be handled. In the case of a “re-debut”, what name will it come back with?