Nvidia ‘unlaunches’ RTX 4080 12GB

Last month, Nvidia announced three graphics cards – an RTX 4090 and two RTX 4080 versions. The company quickly gained criticism for the RTX 4080 12GB, as the card has a different chip and significantly lower performance compared to the 16GB version. Now, Nvidia has hit the rewind button and is ‘unlaunching’ the 12GB RTX 4080. 

The 16GB RTX 4080 will now be the only RTX 4080 hitting the market in November. The smaller 12GB brother will no longer be releasing, in part due to the fact that the card wasn’t named right. Nvidia admits that grouping the 12GB and 16GB cards together was a mistake and could cause confusion.

”The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it’s not named right. Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing. So, we’re pressing the “unlaunch” button on the 4080 12GB”, Nvidia says.

With the 12GB RTX 4080 no longer launching, we do wonder if we’ll see a suspiciously similar GPU re-appearing as the RTX 4070 in the early parts of next year. Nvidia has not officially announced an RTX 4070 yet, and it did not confirm that the planned 12GB RTX 4080 would be renamed. For now, the graphics card is simply cancelled, but the graphics chip at the heart of it will certainly reappear on a differently named product.

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KitGuru Says: After the official performance charts showed up to a 30% performance difference between the 12GB and 16GB versions of the RTX 4080, it became clear that Nvidia needed to change course. Unfortunately, it does now mean that the cheaper GPU will not be available in November and we could be waiting months to see it reappear. 

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