The sensational rethinking of NVIDIA About the marketing of the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB among the hottest news of recent days. The decision, which came after complaints from fans about the name of the product deemed incorrect on the basis of the technical specifications, led the US company to the sensational reverse: on November 16 only the RTX 4080 16 GB will arrive on the market which, to all intents and purposes, we can finally call GeForce RTX 4080 (and that’s it).
The news caught on not only fans, but also NVIDIA’s partners on the break, many of whom had already started the production of the card and especially the boxes, committing not a little money. Money down the drain? According to what reported by Gamer NexusNVIDIA appears to be willing to proceed with reimbursements to partners regarding the boxes, which obviously will have to go to the pulp.
Not clear at the moment if NVIDIA decides to bear the other costs, such as that of the manpower who prepared the cards for shipment and who, from now on, will have to be used to unpack the cards from the boxes and remove all identifiers. Among these, it may also be necessary to flash the BIOS in case the card is proposed with a different name, unless NVIDIA decides to proceed from the drivers keeping the PCI ID.
According to Gamer Nexus sources, the RTX 4080 12 GB will arrive on the market in the future (perhaps it will be re-announced at CES 2023) as GeForce RTX 4070 or 4070 Ti and at a lower price than indicated so far, equal to 1109 euros. This alleged change could have repercussions on NVIDIA’s future plans for the lower-end cards that the company was no doubt already planning, both in terms of name and specifications.
All that remains is to wait for further news, aware that many of the company’s moves will now also depend on the competitiveness of the AMD RDNA 3 offer which will be unveiled at the beginning of November. Among other things, as a side note, if NVIDIA were to introduce an RTX 4070 / Ti with the same specifications as the 4080 12 GB, it would indirectly confirm what was hypothesized in our review of the 4090, namely that NVIDIA kept the margin for a cut in the price lists. based on the price-performance ratio of competing proposals.