Rumor mill: With the RTX 4080 arriving next week, many are wondering what has become of the 12GB version of the card that Nvidia “unlaunched” last month following consumer backlash. According to a regular hardware leaker, the RTX 4080 12GB will land in January with a new name: the RTX 4070 Ti.
As you will remember, Nvidia announced in mid-October that it would be unlaunching the RTX 4080 12GB because it “wasn’t named right.” The company was doubtlessly reacting to the outcry over the card, which had 4GB less VRAM, 25% fewer CUDA cores, and a narrower memory bus than the RTX 4080 16GB.
The RTX 4080 12GB specs made it closer to what should have been an RTX 4070, but it carried an $899 MSRP, around $400 more than the RTX 3070’s MSRP at launch. The outcry led to Nvidia admitting the card should be renamed (and repriced, presumably).
Turning the RTX 4080 12GB into the RTX 4070 would leave a question mark over the original RTX 4070’s fate. According to prolific hardware leaker Kopite7kimi, Nvidia has gotten around this by calling the unlaunched card the RTX 4070 Ti—a move many expected it to make.
