When NVIDIA introduced the GeForce RTX 4000-series GPUs yesterday, the corporate raised lots of eyebrows on the existence of two RTX 4080 playing cards: one with 16GB of reminiscence, and one with 12GB of reminiscence. It isn’t unheard-of to have two GPUs with the identical title and differing quantities of VRAM, however the particular portions of reminiscence made lots of people suspicious that the RTX 4080 12GB was not all it was cracked as much as be. Now, new info from GALAX confirms these suspicions: the GeForce RTX 4080 12GB perhaps ought to have been referred to as “RTX 4070” afterall.
Reminiscence packages are available particular capacities at specific information channel widths. You possibly can’t make a GPU with a 256-bit bus utilizing 12GB of GDDR6X reminiscence, as a result of GDDR6X packages are 32 bits vast. That implies that, to fill a 256-bit bus, it’s important to have 8 packages—and 12 doesn’t divide evenly into 8. Subsequently, it was clear instantly after the announcement that the 12GB card ought to have diminished efficiency in comparison with the 16GB card.
So, alright, it has a slender reminiscence bus for a $900 GPU. That’s honest sufficient when it additionally has much less reminiscence, proper? There’s nonetheless extra occurring beneath the chilly plate than simply that, although. The chart above, which originates from a Chinese language-language press launch put out by AIB vendor GALAX, clearly lays out the specs for the three upcoming GPUs. Most of this was already shared by NVIDIA on its web site; GALAX is providing small bumps to the enhance clocks, however in any other case it is all so as.
For those who have a look at the 2 RTX 4080 fashions, you’ll be able to clearly see that they aren’t utilizing the identical GPU core. The RTX 4080 16GB card is predicated on AD103—simply as rumored—and the RTX 4080 12GB card is predicated on the smaller AD104. If these mannequin numbers do not imply something to you, the brief model is that “AD” refers back to the Ada structure, “10” means that it is the first revision of each Ada and these GPUs, after which the ultimate digit tells you the place within the product stack that GPU falls, with larger numbers which means smaller GPUs.
This case was sussed out by leakers and fanatics earlier than the GPUs even launched, nevertheless it’s nonetheless disappointing to see. The RTX 4080 12GB does not simply lose 1 / 4 of its reminiscence and reminiscence bus, it additionally drops greater than 1 / 4 of its shader cores, dropping to 7680 “CUDA cores” versus the RTX 4080’s depend of 9728. Plus, it’ll be utilizing slower reminiscence than the RTX 4080 16GB, too. That card will get unique 23 Gbps GDDR6X reminiscence, setting it additional aside from the RTX 4080 12GB mannequin weighing in at 21 Gbps.
The response of the {hardware} fanatic group to the naming of the 2 RTX 4080 playing cards, in addition to the general excessive pricing of the Ada Lovelace GPU household, has been extraordinarily vitriolic. The Reddit thread for the Venture Past occasion on the /r/NVIDIA subreddit has over 4000 feedback, and an ideal a lot of them are expressing both disappointment on the pricing or frustration with the naming scheme.
On the one hand, it is easy to level out that the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti was priced at $2,000, and the RTX 4080 12GB card is meant to match that product in efficiency. From that perspective, $899 appears moderately low-cost. On the flip aspect, we recall not so way back when the GeForce GTX 1080 was simply $549 at launch—and the GeForce GTX 1070 was $379.
It is onerous not to take a look at the pricing of present GeForce GPUs and really feel perturbed. $600 used to get you a top-of-the-range graphics card, however now you are trying strictly at previous-generation merchandise if you wish to spend lower than $900. Frankly, we’ll be stunned if these playing cards are literally accessible for below $1000 within the first month of launch.
We have not had the prospect to run our personal testing on these playing cards but however glancing on the numbers above—supplied by NVIDIA—it does appear like there is a sizable efficiency hole between the RTX 4080 12GB and 16GB playing cards. In actual fact, it reminds us of the hole that we have now seen between the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070. Or the GeForce RTX 2080 and 2070—Ahem.
As for why NVIDIA would make such a choice, we have now a hunch. As a lot as customers have complained concerning the worth of the “x80” GeForce card going up (the RTX 4080 16GB’s $1199 is sort of double the value of the RTX 3080’s $699 MSRP), they’d certainly clamor much more loudly about an “x70” card with an $899 price ticket.
In fact, what really issues on the finish of the day is the actual efficiency. If the RTX 4080 12GB is quicker than anything available on the market wanting its personal larger siblings, then maybe the value is justified to a sure diploma. We cannot know for certain till we do our personal testing, however we’ll let what we expect as soon as we do.
