NVIDIA cancels GeForce RTX 4080 12GB
Facing never-ending criticism, NVIDIA has just announced it will not launch GeForce RTX 4080 12GB model, the card that we knew and will always know as RTX 4070. In a last-minute change in September, the company had decided to launch two RTX 4080 models with vastly different specifications. Turns out this has backfired hard.
NVIDIA has just announced it is 'unlaunching' its RTX 4080 12GB GPU. Only the 16GB model will be released. NVIDIA has confirmed that, 4080 16GB launches on November 16th.
Also at AnandTech, Guru3D, and Wccftech.
Previously: Nvidia Announces the RTX 4090, 4080 (16 GB and 12 GB), and More
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Nvidia Announces the RTX 4090, 4080 (16 GB and 12 GB), and More
At Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC), the company announced its first "Lovelace" GPUs for consumers: the RTX 4090 ($1600), RTX 4080 16 GB ($1120), and RTX 4080 12 GB ($900). The graphics cards are made with TSMC's N4 process, and support AV1 encoding and DLSS 3 upscaling.
The RTX 4090 comes with 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM, and launches on October 12. Performance of the 4090 should be at least 60-70% higher than the RTX 3090 Ti, or higher in some cases (raytracing performance should be better than doubled). However, Nvidia is claiming up to quadruple the performance when using DLSS 3, which will not be made available on RTX 20/30-series GPUs due to an apparent requirement of fourth generation Tensor Cores and a newer version of "Optical Flow Accelerator". The new version of Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) can generate entire frames, similar to video interpolation.
The RTX 4080 variants differ in both core counts and VRAM capacity, leading to a significant performance gap between them, and will launch sometime in November. The 4080 16 GB has nearly 27% more CUDA cores and 46% higher memory bandwidth than the 4080 12 GB. The GPUs also use different dies (AD103 and AD104). This could lead you to believe that Nvidia has turned the xx70-class card into a "4080" in order to sell it at a higher price.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 15 2022, @08:33AM (4 children)
Is this a new thing? My ancient MSI AMD Radeon R7 370 came out with 2GB and 4GB models: https://www.msi.com/search/Radeon%20R7%20370 [msi.com]
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(Score: 5, Informative) by Ingar on Saturday October 15 2022, @09:49AM
Because the difference isn't just the amount of memory. It's a different chip with a different performance profile. It would be like Intel calling both their 8-core and 6-core CPUs i7. Basically every reviewer called out the 4080 12GB as the 4070.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday October 15 2022, @10:12AM
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17614/nvidia-cancels-geforce-rtx-4080-12gb-launch-16gb-to-be-sole-rtx-4080-card [anandtech.com]
They tried to lump two entirely different pieces of silicon with different core counts under the same name. The memory bandwidth also changed dramatically but that's likely unavoidable.
Contrast with the quiet launch of the 3080 12 GB variant (originally 10 GB), where both used the same die and there was only a small uplift in core count:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17204/nvidia-quietly-launches-geforce-rtx-3080-12gb-more-vram-more-power-more-money [anandtech.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Booga1 on Saturday October 15 2022, @10:41AM (1 child)
It's not a new thing, but taking a look at the specs shows the reason for the "unlaunch." Your example is excellent, btw. The difference between the 370 2GB and 4GB is only 20mhz and the RAM. It's the same chip with less RAM and a tweak to the frequency.
The two 4080's aren't even the same chip(AD103 vs. AD104). Besides the RAM, some of the additional differences between the 4080 16GB and 12GB are:
76 vs. 60 streaming multiprocessors (21% fewer)
9728 vs. 7680 CUDA cores (21% fewer)
256 bit vs. 192 bit memory bus width (25% smaller)
736GB/s vs. 504GB/s memory bandwidth (32% slower)
64MB vs 48MB L2 cache (25% smaller)
2505Mhz vs. 2610MHz boost clock (4% higher)
In short, this is WAY too big a difference compared to older RAM differentiated products. They're not even the same product, and they're catching a lot of flak for it for good reason.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 15 2022, @04:58PM
Ha. That's weird. Maybe the real world benchmarks or the price points were too close for them to justify different products but they already had them so... ? Well, we'll know soon enough I suppose.
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